Of the Sand
by TatraMegami
Summary: They cloned all of SG1, but then got frightened and dumped them in an alternate universe. But, still, SG1 picks themselves up and moves on, finding a new place in the village hidden in the sand: Sunagakure.
1. What is Right?

A/N: This was the first time I wrote a Stargate SG1 story, but I had so much fun crossing it over with Naruto and creating this world. This story is the first in a trilogy, so I hope you enjoy it.

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Chapter One: What is Right?

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"We shouldn't have done this," one man whispered to the other. "This isn't right."

"We're going to be paid hugely for this, who cares about whether it's right or wrong?" the other replied.

"But _they_ are going to find out," the first man said. "You saw the readings; you know that their minds are undamaged. They will want to return to their world and we can't stop them."

"By that time they'll be out of our hands," the other dismissed.

"But _they_ are coming back again before they will be fetched and we have promised to show the labs off; there's no way we can hide them," the first said.

"We're using the labs that no one ever uses, there's no way that _they_ will be shown it. Besides, we can as that they be picked up before _they_ arrive again," the other shrugged.

"You'll never believed what just happened!" a junior lab assistant called out as he entered the main lab. "They caught a spy in our ranks! Can you believe that this guy was promising to deliver SG1 to the Ori?"

"What?" the first man blurted out. "What happened?"

"They caught him talking to the Ori Priors and now he's in interrogation," the lab monitor continued, taking no real notice of the expressions on the two's faces. "They say that SG1 is coming back ahead of schedule to help us deal with all of this."

"That's good, now if you would excuse us, I think we need to go do some things to prepare for their arrival," the first man numbly said. He left the room in a daze, the second following after him.

"They're sure to discover us now," the first man said as he rushed down the hall. He reached the end of the corridor and punched in a code to unlock the door.

"We'll have to get rid of them somehow," the second man calmly said. He strode up to the nine columns in the middle of the room and looked at them. "They are still connected to the machines, so we could simply enter the kill code."

"Wait," the first man blurted out as the second man touched the console. "I can't let you do that."

"What's the problem? We have to get rid of them, do we not?" the second man asked.

"But not like that," the first man said. "It's not right."

"We were handing them over to the Ori and you didn't have a problem with that," the second man scathingly replied. "Did you really think that the Ori would have treated them to cookies and milk?"

"That's different," the first man stubbornly said.

"Not really, it's just out of our hands, which is really why you have a problem with killing them now," the second man replied.

The first man cast his eyes around for support. They landed on a device hidden in the corner of the room. "We'll send them through that," he said, jabbing his finger at the device.

"Still a coward's way, but at least there won't be any bodies to take care of," the second man decided. "You get the thing up and running and I'll take care of the bodies."

"Right," the first man said. He hurried over to the device in the corner. He lugged it out to the center of the room and carefully turned it on. "What world should I set it to?"

"Somewhere that we've never been. Just pick a random world," the second man replied. He had been busy while the first had fetched the device. The liquid that had been holding the bodies up in the tubes had been drained, leaving the nine of them slumped on the floor of the tubes.

The second man opened a random tube and dragged the body out. He made his way over to where the first man was studying a world through the glass mirror. The second man dropped the body to the floor and studied the world as well. "Looks good. Now help me with the rest of them."

"What about the Entropic Cascade Failure?" the first man asked as he followed the second man back to the tubes. "We don't know what its affect are on worlds that are father back in the branching line. What if it's stronger and we're killing them?"

"That's what we want to happen, ultimately," the second man replied as he dropped another body in front of the mirror. He frowned in thought as he went back to the tubes. "However, I think it's a good chance that the failure will be slight, if it even happens at all."

"How do you mean?" the first man asked as he put down the firth body beside the others.

"Think about it, most of the data we got from that thing was from the alternate universes closest to ours. The same with what we've been able to get from the Tau'ri. We really have no idea what it will be like in those worlds farthest from us," the second man lectured as he continued to carry a body across the lab. "We have no idea when they split from our world, so we have no idea if the universe will even react to them."

"They might not have any doubles," the first man realized. "They might just live."

"Or the universe might not accept them at all and they'll spontaneously combust as soon as they get to the other side," the second man said as he dropped the last body on top of another. "Which is why I suggest that we do not go across ourselves. Just touch them to the mirror and let them go."

"Right," the first man muttered.

They sent the first body across and then waited to watch what happened to it. The body slumped to the ground on the other side, but nothing else happened.

"Okay, let's send the rest of them through," the second man said, already lifting another body.

The rest of the bodies went through as easily as the first, until there was a whole pile on the other side of the mirror. The second man paused before turning the mirror off. "It's a shame," he finally remarked.

"Are you talking about the fact that they will have to build new lives for themselves on an alien planet?" The first man asked, "Or are you talking about how we're not going to get paid for this?"

"Neither, although the second one is a shame," the second man replied. "But, no, I think it's a shame that we didn't get to study them further. We never did figure out why the Tau'ri finished as adolescence with adult minds instead of how our clones normally end up. Oh well," the second man shrugged, "when all of this blows over, we can always try again."

With that, the man spun the dial on the mirror's control device. The world that the clones had been dumped on flickered out of sight before the mirror went blank. The second man went back to the computer console, waving a hand at the first man. "Put that thing away again while I start the cleaning sequence on the tubes."

"I hope that they make it," the first man murmured to himself as he started to lug the device back to the corner. "And I hope that we don't get caught."


	2. Why the Hell am I Naked?

A/N: No real big mention of the Naruto world in this chapter, but at least you get SG1 here. Thanks for reading and yay, a review!

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Chapter Two: Why the Hell am I Naked?

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Teal'c was the first one to wake up. His eyes snapped open and he rolled to his feet, ready to fight. He scanned the room, but nothing stood out, so he turned his attention to the pile of bodies on the floor. They were all a bunch of kids, but something about them looked familiar.

A body at the bottom of the pile stirred, grumbling curses under his breath. Teal'c moved to help the child out, carefully moving bodies until the child could sit up.

"What happened?" the kid questioned as he finally looked around. "And why the hell am I naked?"

Teal'c blinked, recognizing the kid after subtracting a couple of years. "O'Neill?"

The kid blinked as he turned toward Teal'c. "Teal'c, is that you? You look… different. And I'm assuming that the nudity is not your choice."

For the first time since waking up, Teal'c took stock of himself. He had known that he was uninjured, but other than that and the slight breeze, he had not paid attention to his body. As he inspected himself he found that he was younger by almost a hundred years. The most glaring evidence that this was not natural was the loss of his scar. His pouch may have been sewn up after it had been wounded, but he had still been left with a large, puckered scar, which was currently missing from his abdomen.

"We have been cloned," he told O'Neill as he glanced at the unconscious kids with a new understanding.

"The rest of SG1?" Jack asked as he finally noticed the bodies.

"Indeed." Teal'c and Jack focused on the three extra bodies at the same time. It was fairly easy to pick out the varied members of SG1 from the bodies lined up on the ground. The blond girl had to be Samantha Carter and the dark brunette girl had to be Vala Mal Doran. Daniel Jackson reminded Teal'c of when they had first met, but he looked in even more of a need of attention than he did back then. The kid of Cameron Mitchell looked exactly like the pictures of the real young Mitchell that Vala had paraded around after getting back from the high school reunion. That left three extra children: another young kid with brown hair and soft features and a redheaded girl and boy.

"I think, maybe, just maybe, that I recognize them," O'Neill said after a minute. "But it can't be possible, they're all dead."

"We are clones ourselves, O'Neill," Teal'c reminded. As he looked at the three kids again he could fully see what O'Neill saw.

"But we're alive, it's possible to get our DNA, how did whoever the hell did this get theirs?" O'Neill asked, throwing up his arms.

"What is the last thing that you can remember?" Teal'c asked.

"We were just on P3-494, attending another one of those boring conferences that the kids love," Jack finally replied. "They wanted a bigwig to talk to, so I was sent along."

"That is what I remember, as well," Teal'c confirmed.

"So, I get how they could get the stuff needed to create us, but what about them?" Jack motioned toward the three bodies.

"This is not the first time that we have been to P3-494," Teal'c said. "This is not even the first time we have attended one of their conferences."

"And not the first time that we've had to bring along a bigwig." Jack started in realization. "That was back when we had Jonas on the team."

"And General Hammond and Doctor Fraiser attended as the 'bigwigs,'" Teal'c finished.

With this revelation, they could look at the three kids and put names to their faces. The browned haired boy was Jonas Quinn, the redheaded girl was Janet Fraiser, and the redheaded boy – more of a rust colored red than Janet's hair – was George Hammond.

"Clothes, we need clothes," Jack muttered after a minute of wonder. "Preferably before any of the girls wake up."

Teal'c scanned the room they were in with more detail than just a search for enemies. It was a pretty plain room, but there were clues enough that told Teal'c that this was some sort of place of religion. It seemed to have been abandoned for a long time and there was a fine layer of dust covering everything. The room was all packed up and boxes lined the walls. It reminded Teal'c of the dryer potions of Chulak and what little he saw of Abydos before its destruction. He was fairly sure that they were on a desert world, which really meant that they needed clothing. It also meant that the inhabitants of P3-494 who were responsible for this had moved them, as P3-494 did not have a desert area.

It took Jack a minute to get over his modesty and help Teal'c search the room for any type of clothing. "Jackpot," he softly called out as he lifted the top off of a stone box. Teal'c joined him as Jack started to lift the clothing out. The only thing within the box seemed to be robes, but they were at least something to cover their bodies.

"They seemed to be in remarkable shape for the amount of time they have been left here," Teal'c commented as he shrugged into a robe. The edges of the robe pooled on the ground and Teal'c had to lift it up in order to walk - something that he found to be rather odd. He was used to the fact that, if clothing didn't fit him, it would be too small, rather than too big. At least he was sure that he wouldn't look as odd as the other younger boys would be. He was fairly sure that he looked like a young teenager instead of a child, as the other members of SG1 seemed to look.

Jack had already gotten dressed and now he stood with an armful of clothes. "How are we going to handle the girls?"

"I will take care of the girls," Teal'c answered the unspoken cry for help as he took the bundle of robes from Jack's arms.

"Right, I'll pick out robes for Danny and the others," Jack said as he turned back to the box with a relieved sigh.

Teal'c carefully covered the three girls the robes that looked like it wouldn't drown them. It was not the first time that something like this had happened and Teal'c knew that the girls would prefer being dressed when they woke up, even if a teammate had been the one to do it. That's not to say that they wouldn't be out for blood, but it at least lightened the anger that their teammates had to deal with.

Janet was already stirring when he put the robe on her, so he sat beside her and waited for her to wake up. He motioned to Jack the next time the boy looked over and Jack motioned back to him that General Hammond was awakening.

"Doctor Fraiser," Teal'c spoke when the redhead's eyes opened.

"What happened?" she moaned as she put a hand to her head.

"We have been cloned by the people on P3-494," Teal'c answered, raising his voice slightly when he saw Hammond look over.

"We suspect that your memories are from an earlier year than ours are," Jack said as he helped Hammond sit up.

Teal'c did the same with Doctor Fraiser, but he held her back when she went to check on the others. "They should wake up in time, like the rest of us, Doctor Fraiser."

"I remember April 6th, 2002," General Hammond answered.

"Same here," General," Janet replied, moving slightly to check on Sam, who was next to her.

"I remember January 21st, 2008," Jack said.

"Five years," Hammond softly commented.

"Yeah, things have changed a bit," Jack replied to the unasked question. "I got promoted to General, Danny came back and we picked up a few teammates – literally, in one case."

"Five years," Hammond repeated to himself.

"Did I mention that I was promoted to General?" Jack asked.

"What gave them the bright idea to do that?" Hammond asked, humor in his tone. "And why did you allow it to happen?"

Jack shrugged and grinned. "Things changed a bit, but that meant that I could actually keep my silver hair. Though, it's not silver now."

"What happened?" Jonas groaned as he woke up.

"Something happened," Sam replied, waking up as well.

"We have been cloned," Teal'c repeated, "and moved to another planet."

"What?" Jack asked, looking surprised at that.

"The climate is a desert climate, which does not exist on P3-494," Teal'c answered.

"So, how did we get here?" Jack asked, looking around, expecting to see signs of a Stargate.

"I believe that a Quantum Mirror was use to transport us here, Teal'c answered, indicating the weirdly shaped mirror that was standing at the altar space in front of them. It was also where they had been piled up before Teal'c had moved them.

"A Quantum Mirror?" Sam asked as she sat up to look. "Do you see the control device?"

"Could you find our way home if we do find it?" Jack asked, casting around for the control device as well.

"Maybe. We've only done limited experiments with the Quantum Mirror because of the Entropic Cascade Failure, so we really haven't figured out how to recognize our universe out of the thousands that exist," Sam answered. She got up to inspect the mirror. "But, we might be able to figure it out, because I don't know about you, but I didn't agree to be cloned and it's obvious that they are trying to get rid of us."

"You think that we'll be able to see them in the mirror?" Jack asked.

"Jack?" Daniel called out as he opened his eyes.

"Right here, Danny," Jack said as he made his way over to the shrunken archaeologist.

"Did someone get the license plate number of the bus that hit me?" Cam asked as he heaved himself up.

"There was no bus, Colonel Mitchell, we have been cloned," Teal'c answered, giving a small smile at Mitchell's grumbling.

"Wait, cloned?" Cam asked, coming out of his dark mood. "Like robot clones or teen clones?"

"Younger than teenagers," Jack cheerfully replied, giving Daniel a reassuring pat on his shoulder.

"How young, exactly?" Cam asked as he investigated himself. "And what is up with the funky clothes?"

"The clothes were the only thing here and young enough to get free candy at banks easily," Jack answered.

"I'd say that we're all between the ages of seven to ten, with all of us at varying ages and Teal'c looking a little older than that," Janet said.

"Weird," Jack replied.

"Wait, if we're clones, then why are we so young?" Jonas asked. "The clones that we saw earlier were the same age as you."

"They were also robots, though," Cam pointed out.

"The Asgards did something to my genes after that one time that only makes mini-mes," Jack answered. "I suppose that they could have done the same to the rest of you, but we are we so young now?"

"And will we have any troubles like Jack's clone?" Daniel piped up.

"It could just be the difference in cloning techniques," Sam offered. "Loki was an Asgard who had the same technology as what Thor had to do what he did to your genes. Those on P3-494 don't have the same kind technology as the Azgard do, which could be why the anti-cloning technology worked better. The natives on P3-494 might have higher technology than the majority of earth currently does, but the Azgard have even more advanced technology."

"I assuming that this clone you were talking about had some sort of medical problem?" Janet asked after Sam was finished explaining.

"Janet!" Daniel and Sam chorused as they finally noticed her presence.

"How is it possible?" Daniel continued.

"They got what they needed the last time we were there for a conference," Sam exclaimed as she put all of the pieces together. She turned to Daniel. "It was while you were ascended."

"We've got to go through introductions later," Jack said, "but in the meantime, to answer your question, Doc, the clone was designed only to last a week before he died."

"Well, from what I can tell right now, without any instruments, we are all healthy," Janet frowned at Vala. "She still hasn't woken up, though."

"Vala," Daniel called out as he poked her with his toes. "Vala, get up."

"I'm sleeping, let a girl have her beauty sleep," Vala grumbled as she curled up to escape Daniel's feet.

"We've been cloned, Vala," Daniel replied.

"Then tell them to leave us alone," Vala said.

"No, I'm not sure how to break it to you, but we're the clones, Vala," Daniel replied.

"What?" Vala screeched as she bolted up. She groaned and grabbed her head. "What did I drink?"

"The headache will go away in a couple of minutes," Janet soothed as she moved closer to the brunet. "How are you feeling otherwise?"

"I've been worse, although I've never been cloned before," Vala answered. She blinked up at Janet. "Who are you?"

"Ah!" Jack exclaimed as he clapped his hands together. "Now that everyone's awake, we can introduce ourselves. I'm General Jack O'Neill."

"I'm pretty sure we all know that, Jack," Daniel said. He glanced around, identifying everyone. "I'm assuming that my introduction will be mainly for Jonas, but I'm Doctor Daniel Jackson."

"Back in the flesh," Jack chimed in.

"I'm Vala Mal Doran, Daniel's wife," Vala introduced herself with a wicked grin.

Daniel coughed and started spluttering. "Wife?"

"On that planet with all of the pink trees, remember?" Vala asked. "We got married and Sam and the big guy got married and Cam married a goat."

"It wasn't a goat," Cam broke in.

"She looked like a goat," Vala replied.

"But she was not an animal," Cam said, holding up a finger like he was proving a point.

"Which explains why you left her," Vala quipped.

"She's not my wife," Daniel insisted before things could go further.

"I'm Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell, official leader of SG1 when General O'Neill isn't around," Cam introduced himself.

"I'm General George Hammond," George went next.

"I'm Doctor Janet Fraiser," Janet said.

"And I'm Jonas Quinn. I was on SG1 when Doctor Jackson was ascended." Jonas turned to Daniel. "Can I just say that your notes were incredibly helpful? I could not have done so well without them."

"I'm glad that I was of some help," Daniel said.

"I know everyone knows me, but I guess I should say that I'm a Lieutenant Colonel now," Sam said.

Teal'c did not say anything, as there was no point to it in his mind. Everyone knew him and there was no real change in his rank, therefore they did not need an introduction from him. "What shall we do now?"

"General?" Jack asked as he turned to George.

"General," George replied, a hint of disbelief and humor in his tone. "You do have more experience in leading a field team than I do."

"Right," Jack trailed off as he looked around, ignoring Cam's faint grumblings for being left out of the loop. "Carter, where are you on figuring out the mirror?"

"So far I haven't found the control device and I'm not sure how to activate it without it, but there seems to be a lot of Ancient technology scattered around the room, so there seems to be a chance for us to find it," Sam reported.

"Keep looking, Carter." Jack ran his hands down his face. "Okay, here's what I'm going to suggest. I think that we should split up, half of us searching the room for the doohickey that we need and the other half checking out the area."

"Sounds like a plan to me," George said, nodding in agreement.

"Okay, I'll go with Teal'c, Daniel and Cam to explore the area," Jack decided. "The rest of you can stay here."

"I'm going with you," Vala called out as she scrambled up.

"You sure?" Jack asked.

"If Daniel's going, then I'm going," Vala replied.

"I would have thought that you would want to explore this place for things to take," Daniel quipped.

Vala shrugged. "I'll go through it later when you geek about the rocks."

"I should have never let the two of you meet," Daniel muttered to himself.

"Right, kiddies," Jack called out. He turned towards the great doors that he assumed led out of the room and blinked when he realized that they really were all kids at the moment. "Cam can guard the door, but the rest of us are off to find the yellow brick road."

They split up and went about to their various tasks. Daniel and Vala fetched sandals and head covers for the group while Jack, Teal'c, Cam, and George pried the doors open. Heat rolled into the room as soon as the doors finally moved and the explorer group quickly geared up. There weren't any real weapons in plain sight, but Teal'c fetched three ceremonial staves for them to use. Daniel and Vala were too small to properly use the staves, but Jack, Cam and Teal'c looked to be on the older side of things and they could at least hold the staves. Plus, there was the fact that both Teal'c and Cam were experts at staff wielding and Jack had fought with enough staff weapons to have an idea of what he was doing with one.

Finally geared up and armed, the group stepped out into the blazing sun.


	3. Sand and Water

A/N: More settling in with SG1. Thanks for reading and reviewing!

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Chapter Three: Sand and Water

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Just as Teal'c predicted, they were surrounded by desert. The room that they had woke up in seemed to be carved out from a cliff and a long set of stairs descended down to the sand. It was desolate and Jack missed his sunglasses, as it took him a while to get used to the brightness of the sun reflected back from the sand. Once his eyes did get used to the glare, he couldn't see anything but sand and large rocks.

"Got any ideas, Danny? Teal'c?" Jack asked.

"Okay, now you're just reaching," Daniel muttered, but he obligingly squinted around. "We need to look for signs of life."

"There," Teal'c called out, pointing at the sky to the east.

Jack whirled around to look and just barely spotted the hawk flying in the distance.

"What is it?" Daniel asked.

"It's a bird," Vala answered.

"As well as a city," Teal'c added.

"Really?" Jack asked, turning to Teal'c in surprise. "You can tell all of that from a bird?"

"That was not a wild animal, it moved with too much purpose for that. I believe it to be a messenger bird." Teal'c nodded his head toward Daniel. "Were Daniel Jackson able to correctly see, I am sure that he would have said the same."

"My vision's not that bad," Daniel to Jack when the older boy looked over to him. "But it seems to be the same as when I really was a kid and distances are a bit blurry."

"Well, maybe this city will have glasses that we can get you," Jack said as he turned back to the direction of the city. "I hope that they have sunglasses."

"Are we going to go now?" Vala asked, almost bouncing in place in excitement.

"How far do you think the city is?" Jack asked Teal'c, trying to gauge the distance himself.

"I believe it to be several clicks away, O'Neill," Teal'c answered.

"It's probably at least a day's trip away," Daniel said. "Desert travel can be a bit different than normal terrain. It's harder walking on the sand and you should always go around the dunes, which adds more time to the journey."

"As I recall, you can go over the dunes if you have help from a camel," Jack teased.

Daniel rolled his eyes. "You're _still_ bringing that up? It's been over a decade since that happened!"

"Ooh, is this about your first trip through the Stargate?" Vala asked, jumping up and down. He grinned. "I love that story."

"It's a great story," Jack agreed.

"I would suggest that we take this trip during the night, as we are not sure if we have a source of water just yet," Teal'c suggested.

"We need to check in with the others first, anyway," Jack agreed.

"I think we should keep looking for a bit," Daniel said as he knelt down in the sand. "Look at this."

"It's a dead plant," Vala said. She squatted down beside Daniel. "What's so special about it?"

"Plants don't grow in the desert unless there's a source of water nearby," Daniel lectured. "We might have to search hard for it, maybe even dig, but I think we might be able to find water."

"Great." Jack clapped his hands together." Now all that's left is to find something to eat."

"I believe that the source of water is this way," Teal'c said, motioning to a pathway along the cliff that was covered in scraggly bushes.

"Let's go then," Jack said as Daniel and Vala stood up.

Teal'c led the way down the pathway, beating back the dried bushes with his staff. Daniel and Vala came next and Jack brought up the rear. The pathway wound its way up the cliff, finally ending at a large ledge. Near the base of the cliff, there was a pool of water. Jack could faintly hear the trickle of water as it flowed down the cliff side.

"Water," Daniel called out.

Vala laughed and moved to the edge of the pond. "We found water!"

"The question is, is it safe to drink?" Jack asked.

"We do not have our usual gear," Teal'c reminded." That meant that they did not have any water purification tablets, which were recommended if one had to drink off world water. Usually, protocol encouraged that they eat and drink their own food rather than the local supplies.

"Our immune systems might not be fully developed," Daniel murmured, remembering the lectures given to the teen clone of Jack.

"Let's take a sample back to the Doc, let her figure out what to do," Jack decided as he pulled out a dinged up goblet from his robes. He noted Daniel and Vala staring and he shrugged. "I grabbed it in case we ran into water and wanted to take some back.

"I think that boiling the water might work," Daniel said. He took the goblet from Jack and started inspecting it. "And this goblet might be something used in rituals; look at the pictures engraved on it."

"Oh, come on," Vala huffed out as she grabbed the goblet from Daniel. She carefully skimmed the top of the water with a stick before dipping the goblet into the clear water. She handed the full goblet of water back to Daniel. "You can study the pictures later, now I want to go back and explore the room. I wonder if there is anything with a higher quantity in gold."

"You heard the lady; let's take this water back to the Doc," Jack said.

They headed back down the pathway, Teal'c and Vala leading while Jack made sure that Daniel didn't spill the water in the goblet. At the end of the pathway, it was only a short distance to the doors of the room.

Cam was there, sitting in the shade with the staff beside him. He jumped up when he saw them and raced over.

"Did you find the holy grail out there?" he asked when he saw the goblet of water.

"Nah, I found that in the room," Jack replied.

They entered the room, finding it slightly reorganized. The boxers were resorted differently; Jack assumed that the more relevant boxes were in the front of the room, while the ones filled with truly useless trinkets were in the back. Carter was still in front of the Mirror and in her hands was the familiar odd shaped control device.

"Hey, you found it," Daniel exclaimed. Jack reached out and snagged the goblet of water so that Daniel and Vala could race over to Sam.

"We found something, too. Doc, see what you can do with this," Jack called out as he lifted the goblet.

"Water," Janet exclaimed as she peered into the goblet. She took it from Jack and started to inspect it further. "It looks clean, but who knows what kind of bacteria it has and who knows what antibodies that we have, even ignoring the fact that this is alien bacteria."

Jack left Janet to her investigating and headed over to where George was still stacking boxes. "Hello, sir."

"Colonel, sorry," George shook his head. "General. It still feels strange to say that when referencing you."

"Oh, I get that from a lot of people," Jack grinned and rocked back on his heels. "And even after all these years, it still feels slightly odd to be a General."

"I can relate to that," George sighed before focusing back onto Jack. "So, what's out there?"

"Sand, a whole lot of sand," Jack replied. "Teal'c was right, this is a different planet and it is mostly a desert. The good news is that we found a nearby water source and about a day or so away there's a city."

"A city?" George raised his right eyebrows in surprise and faint worry. A city was both good and bad for them right now.

"To be honest, it looks more like cliffs to me, but Teal'c said that the hawk was a city hawk and a messenger and I believe him," Jack answered. "We're planning to check it out at night, probably for a day trip."

George nodded. "Travel by night, rest and investigate by day. All right, you have a go."

"You know," Jack reflected. "I think I missed hearing that. So, how did things go here?"

"We found more clothes, including what looks like their version of a military uniform. We also found what we think is good food, although it still needs to be tested."

"Food?" Jack perked up.

"Military rations," George said and Jack deflated.

"Do they look as bad as ours do?" Jack asked.

"Energy bars, it seems. The good thing is that they are more recent than anything else here," George said.

"Yum. Did you find anything that looks like money?" Jack asked. "Because we might be able to buy food from the locals when we get to the city."

"We've put aside some coins that we found," George answered. "We have no way of telling whether they are the current currency used or not, but it's worth checking out."

"How's Carter doing with the doohickey?" Jack asked, turning to the three kids.

"We found the control device, but she hasn't been able to activate the mirror," George frowned. "She says that it needs to be fixed. Now, as far as I know, we were never able to figure out how it really works, but the Lieutenant Colonel says that she might be able to figure it out."

"Yeah, we did learn more about how this stuff works between the reports we got back from Atlantis and the stuff we got off of Merlin," Jack mused.

"Atlantis? Merlin?" George repeated in surprise.

"As in the lost city of and the round table?" Jack asked. "Yep."

"You've got to give me a better debriefing," George said, shaking his head in disbelief.

"So, what other things have you found?" Jack asked, looking around at the boxes.

"We've found more clothes and dishes that we can eat out of and a lot of useless items," George answered. "I'm no archaeologist, but I believe that this was a religious site that the military later took over."

"Oh?" Jack tried to raise his eyebrow and failed.

"The boxes where we found the military clothing, the food, and other supplies are newer than the boxes containing candles and the like," George answered.

"Sounds like a good theory. I'm sure that Danny and Jonas will agree with you after they get a chance to fully look the place over." Jack rolled his eyes. "It would probably set Daniel off on a rant."

"Are you taking him with you?" George asked, glancing over at Daniel."

"If he's up for it and I can tear him away from this place. I was also hoping to take Teal'c and Cam along," Jack replied.

"I'm sure that the rest of us can hold down the fort while you're gone," George said. "I would feel better if I had a gun in my hands rather than a staff, but I'm not completely useless with it."

"Of course not." Jack grinned. He knew that George still had plenty of fight in him, even with his mental age. "We'll leave at dusk, then."

Jack gave George a nod before wandering over to where the 'kids' were gathered in front of the Mirror. Although Jack had always referred to them as kids before, now they truly looked the part. Sam, Daniel, Jonas, and Vala appeared to be on the lower range of ages that they had ended up as. Jack crouched down next to Daniel and Vala and poked at the tablet that Daniel was holding.

Daniel swatted at Jack's hand. "Quit that, I'm trying to read it."

"What's it say?" Jack asked as he turned to inspect the gold platter that Vala had.

"It's a strange mixture of Arabic and Japanese, or at least their versions of the language," Daniel said. "It's a description of some kind of ritual involving demons."

"Goa'uld?" Jack asked. The parasitic aliens usually set themselves up as gods, but they had run into a few who used other fearsome terms to describe themselves. And then there was Ba'al, but Jack never liked to think about Ba'al.

"It's hard to say. They don't say anything about these Bjuu being from the stars or the heavens, but they do stay that they are demons," Daniel replied.

"Huh, interesting," Jack commented before turning to Sam. "Hammond said that this thing was broken?"

"Yes sir. It doesn't activate, no matter which direction I turn the control device, but I'm hopeful that I can actually fix it," Sam replied. She picked up the control device. "I did actually find something interesting that you're going to want to listen to."

"Oh?" Jack asked.

"Look at this control device, notice anything different about it compared to the control device in our universe?" Sam asked as she handed the control device to Jack.

Jack stared at it, but nothing jumped out at him. "It's a different shade of purple?" he hazard a guess.

"The symbols on the control device go in a different direction than the control device in our universe," Sam corrected. "Now, Daniel didn't see any differences in the control device that he first went to and the control device that Doctor Carter and Major Kawalski had did have a slightly different order. Now, at the time we figured it to be a slight deviation in design because of the alternate world, but what if we were wrong?"

"Carter?" Jack asked, motioning for her to go on.

"As I've said, we've only ever explored the worlds closest to ours. What if these symbols indicate more than what universe we are at, what if these symbols told us the direction of the universe?" Sam asked.

"Like, if we turn left we'll eventually make it to the next alternate universe?" Jack quipped.

"More like this universe comes before that universe, sir," Sam answered, still waiting for his reaction.

"And all of this would mean?" Jack prompted.

"Since we only recognize some of the symbols, I would guess that we are quite far from our universe," Sam answered. She hesitated before plunging on. "Sir, I don't think that we'll easily be able to get back home, even if I could fix the mirror. We would either have to jump through universes in our direction or our universe would have to connect here."

"Could we make it home with universe jumping?" Jack asked. "We won't get horribly lost, will we?"

"We are fairly sure that the symbols on the control device are for specific universes and, with what we've just learned about direction, we should be able to get to our world." Sam paused and smiled. "I think I remember the symbol for our universe."

"You think?" Jack raised his eyebrows. He really didn't want to take that big of a chance off of 'I think.'

"Close enough that I should be able to recognize it when it appears on the control device." Sam shrugged. "Something more is that I'm not sure how Entropic Cascade Failure will affect us. From what I remember, this universe was on the far end of the control device, which means that it is drastically changed from our universe. We might not even exist in this universe."

"Which will mean?" Jack trailed off.

"The theories suggest that, since we are in a universe farther from our originating universe, the Entropic Cascade Failure would have a higher impact, as the elements between the two worlds are out of sync. But then, we really haven't been this far away from our own universe, so we might not be affected at all," Sam answered. "Given how we didn't spontaneously combust when first entering this universe, we stand a decent chance of the latter happening."

"But we'll have to wait to be sure," Janet said as she approached the group. She focused in on Jack. "I'll need a fire to boil the water."

"I'll help," Vala volunteered, putting her gold to the side.

"Outside," Jack said as he steered her to the door. They didn't need Vala to be playing with fire in an enclosed space. Plus, he really didn't know if the room was ventilated or not.

Cam followed them outside and helped Jack build up a fire in a shallow alcove near the door. They used the dried bits of bushes as kindling to create a small fire, which is all they really wanted. Jack didn't want to advertise their presence until they had gotten a hold on the new world.

They used a copper pot to boil the water from the goblet, so that they could trek back up the pathway to get another cup of water. Once the water reached a rolling boil, they took it off of the fire and brought it back inside the room to cool down. While they waited for the water to cool, Janet had each of them test their reactions to the ration bars that they had found, just to be sure that no one was allergic to the contents. Fairly sure that they weren't going to die from the off world food, they sat down and ate.


	4. Playing Games

A/N: Finally we meet the Naruto characters. I have this set when Gaara is fairly young, a couple of years at least before canon for Naruto starts. Thanks for reading and reviewing!

* * *

Chapter Four: Playing Games

* * *

The sun was setting when they were finished with their meal of energy bars and water. Jack rounded up the members of his party together and they bundled up in extra robes before they left the room once more.

This time they set out towards the cliffs that were the city's walls, where they had seen the hawk fly from. Teal'c and Daniel took the lead, more used to navigating in the desert. Luckily for them, they could see faint lights from the city. Normally, it probably would have blended in to its surroundings, as it was more of a glow than any one source of light, but SG1 was used to picking out the subtle differences like that. They weren't used to the total darkness, so the glow stood out to them.

It took them all night to cross the desert, stopping and resting along the way. The sky was just lightening when they reached the massive walls surrounding the city. Most of the lights had shut off hours before and no one seemed to be around to see them sneaking through the large doors.

"I'm surprised that worked, Cam whispered as they made their way down the street.

"You'd think that there would be at least one person guarding the door," Jack agreed.

"Might just be a wall to keep the sound out in case of sandstorms," Daniel sleepily said. Even though he was tired, Daniel was still eagerly looking around the village.

"I suppose," Jack said, sounding doubtful. "Let's go find a place to hide out until everyone wakes it. We look a bit odd, especially since we look like kids."

They found an alley out of the way and took turns sleeping and watching for a couple of hours each. It wasn't a great amount of sleep, but they had done with worse before. Of course, back then they were all physically adults, but this time they had the energy of a young body to carry them through.

It was early afternoon when they finally emerged, but there was still enough of a crowd from the lunch rush that no one noticed them as they made one lap around the market place together. The party split up after that, each carrying a small purse of what seemed to be the accepted form of money. Teal'c and Cam went down one end of the market place to shop, while Jack and Daniel went down the other end.

Jack handled the buying, seeing as how he looked as though he could simply be a kid out shopping for his mother. Daniel looked a little too young to be shopping for anything but toys on his own. He helped out as best that he could, but there wasn't really much for him to do, as most of it came down to haggling.

He was fascinated by all of the cultural things that some vendors were selling, but there wasn't much to see when they got further down into the food vendors. Daniel started casting around for something else to occupy his attention. He ended up people watching, which was how he picked out the redheaded boy first.

He looked to be the same age that Daniel currently looked like, which was why his actions were surprising. There was a field off to the side of the market, where kids of all ages played. The redheaded boy was just standing at the very edge of the play area, partially hidden from the kids. He was watching the kids playing with a blank look on his face, and, surprisingly, the kids were totally ignoring him. Pr, maybe they just didn't notice the redhead, as they were focused on their game. Daniel wondered why the redhead wasn't trying to join in.

"Daniel?" Jack asked, noticing that the archaeologist was staring off into space. He followed Daniel's line of sight and saw the redheaded boy. Jack frowned and grabbed Daniel's hand, dragging the small boy over to where the redheaded child was standing. By the time he made it over, the frown was covered up with a friendly smile and Daniel had lost the odd look over Jack's actions – more for Jack's grabbing his hand than for going over to the child. SG1 was used to Jack's softness for children, but Jack figured that it looked more like he and Daniel were brothers if they held hands when moving oddly.

"You know, I bet if you ask, they'll let you play," Jack said to the redheaded boy.

"No, they won't," the redhead calmly replied. He turned to look at the two boys. "Who are you?"

"I'm Jack and this is Danny," Jack replied. "Why won't they let you play?"

"They are afraid that I will kill them," the redhead answered.

"Kill them? Why would they think that a kid like you could kill them?" Jack asked, staring at the boy in shock.

"Because I could kill them." The boy's eyes lit up with an unholy glee. "Crush them so that my sand could drink their blood."

"You could not kill then, or threaten to crush them in sand and they might just let you play," Jack suggested.

"I have tried that," the redhead calmed down and looked faintly sad. "They are too afraid of me. I am a monster."

"No, you're not," Jack exclaimed. This brought the trio to the children's notice and the group scattered while shrieking.

"See?" the redheaded boy observed. His face showed no reaction to the mass runaway.

"That's not right," Jack said, scanning the crowd for the adults' reactions. Thankfully, the adults didn't seem to really be paying attention to the play area.

"We'll play with you," Daniel offered before he really thought about it. Once he did, he just shrugged at the look that Jack gave him. They looked like children, they might as well act like it for the redhead, who actually was a child. "They left the ball."

"You want to play with me? You're not afraid of me?" The redheaded boy looked confused at the concept.

"Come on, it'll be fun." Jack let go of Daniel's hand, allowing Daniel to run to get the ball. Jack then held his hand out to the redheaded boy.

The redhead hesitated before taking Jack's hand and following him onto the field. There, they started up an easy game of kicking the ball around to one another. The redhead seemed to be completely new to the game, but he was able to kick the ball better than Daniel could.

They played for half an hour before Teal'c and Cam found them. "Why didn't anyone tell me we were playing ball?" Cam demanded as he dropped his backs off with Jack's and ran to join in on the game.

Jack gave his place up to the boy and walked over to talk to Teal'c. "How did everything go?"

"We procured everything on the list, O'Neill," Teal'c answered. He eyed the redhead. "Who are you playing with?"

"Just some kid. There's something going on here, though, the kids all seemed to be afraid of him," Jack answered, keeping his voice low.

"There is something different about this world," Teal'c agreed. "I have seen many odd things, O'Neill. What I would assume to be the military in this world move from place to place on the roof. I have even seen one standing on a wall."

"That is strange," Jack said, reflexively glancing up to check if there were any people on the nearby rooftops. "Anyway, there were a couple of things down that way that we didn't get to buy, so do you want the kids or shopping duty?" Jack asked.

"I shall watch over Daniel Jackson, Colonel Mitchell, and the boy," Teal'c decided.

"Right, I'll be back, then," Jack said before leaving.

He wandered down the street, keeping an eye on the various shops as he headed towards the shop that he had wanted. He saw a weapons store and made a note to have Teal'c check it out on a later date. Teal'c and George looked like the oldest of the group, hopefully old enough to buy some actual weapons. But, in the meantime, Jack wanted to get something to tide them over.

Not having Daniel meant that he could walk right up to the almost sleazy looking knife stand. This wasn't the first knife stand that he had passed, but this was the first store that looked as though they would actually have decent blades that they'd be willing to sell to Jack. The seller was busy with another costumer, which meant that Jack had the freedom to check the knives out. He was just testing the balance on a promising knife when the sharp tip of another was pressed into the back of his neck.

"You aren't buying that to use on my brother, are you?" the owner of the knife asked.

"What?" Jack blurted out.

"You aren't planning on killing Gaara?" the girl asked, stilling pressing the knife into his neck.

"Who?" Jack asked, even though he had a pretty good guess as to whom she was talking about. They had really only talked to one person in this world, after all, but still, why would they want to kill him?

"The redheaded kid that you conned into letting his guard down," the girl snarled out. "His name is Gaara."

"We kind of forgot that part of the conversation," Jack commented. "But we're just playing ball with him."

"No one plays ball with Gaara. They're all afraid of him," the girl said.

"We're not afraid of him and we just happened to think that a kid should play ball at least once in his life," Jack said. "Now, can you stop poking me with your knife? We're not going to kill him."

"You're just playing with him?" The knife disappeared and Jack turned around to find a blonde girl staring at him in shock. "Don't you know what he could do to you?"

"He said something about killing us with sand, but that still doesn't scare us. I've seen Danny playing with worse." Like the Unas, Jack thought to himself.

"And you aren't going to kill him?" the blond asked.

"We don't kill kids," Jack answered.

"Then what are you buying the knife for?" the girl asked, still looking at his suspiciously.

"My brother was playing around with my last knife and he lost it." Jack pulled a face. "I'm here to replace it."

"Are you in the Academy?" the girl asked as she put her knife away.

"The Academy?" Jack asked. "We're new to town, you see."

"That explains why you're not afraid of Gaara," the girl said to herself. "We have a ninja academy here in Suna."

"Ninja academy?" Jack asked, blinking in shock and wondered if the girl really meant freaky assassin ninja.

"Teaching people the shinobi arts," the girl replied. "Suna accepts people six to twelve, so you should be able to get your parents to sign you and your brother up."

"You teach kids how to be ninja?" Jack asked.

"Your village didn't have any contact with ninjas at all?" the girl looked a bit surprised at that. "Though, maybe you've just never seen a Genin team before."

"Right," Jack said, hipping not to draw any more attention to himself.

"If you're going to be a ninja, you can't get a knife like that," the girl said, motioning to the forgotten blade in Jack's hand. "Civilian blades are useless for practicing. Come with me." The girl took the knife from Jack and put it back on the counter before dragging Jack to the weapon shop that he had passes before.

"But I never said that I was signing up," Jack spluttered.

"We're going to need to get you some blunt kunai to practice with along with some sharpened ones to use," the girl rambled on without listening to him. "Are you thinking about using any other kind of weapon? I myself am learning to use the fan."

"I'm not sure if we have the money for all of that," Jack protested.

"Don't worry about money, I have credit at this store," the girl waved off his protests and motioned to the store owner. "The basic academy package. Now, let's check out the toys."

Jack tried to protest some more, but he ended up being dragged around to see the senbon and other weapons. Jack picked out a simple katana and the girl made him get a kusarigama, a chain and sickle. Jack agreed to it, figuring that Teal'c could learn how to use it, if no one else could.

The girl waved off any attempts Jack made at payment for the weapons, simply nodding at the shopkeeper and taking the weapons pouch. "It's for Gaara, my way of repaying you for actually playing with him, even if I think you are crazy," she insisted as she gave him the weapons pouch.

"The kid's not too bad, if you give him a try," jack said.

"If you say so." The girl paused outside of the weapons store. "I'll let you go from here. Gaara can stay out as late as he wants, but we're having dinner in about an hour, so see if you can send him home then."

"Will do." Jack nodded, pleased that she was making an effort. "I'm Jack."

"Temari," the girl introduced herself before leaving.

Jack headed back over to the small playground to see Cam and Daniel trying to teach Gaara how to throw the ball.

"O'Neill," Teal'c nodded when Jack approached him. "Did you have any trouble procuring what you needed?"

"Ran into the kid's sister and ended up getting extra supplies," Jack answered as he handed Teal'c the katana.

"The sun will be setting shortly," Teal'c observed, calmly accepting the weapon.

"The kid has dinner in about an hour," Jack replied before settling down to watch the kids play.


	5. Spying

A/N: More of an interlude than a chapter, but enjoy!

* * *

Chapter Five: Spying

* * *

Gaara wasn't sure what to make of the two that approached him out of nowhere. They said that they weren't afraid of him, but everyone was afraid of him. Yet, they still played ball with him and they continued even when the other two joined them. They played with him, but didn't seem to be trying to kill him with the ball or any other weapon. He was slightly worried when the older brunet disappeared, but then Cam and Daniel started adding conditions onto the game and he became absorbed. He was right, playing ball was fun, which was why he was so disappointed when the older boy said that they needed to go. The two that he was playing with reluctantly said their goodbyes and the four of them disappeared into the fading crowd.

Gaara absently noticed that dinner would be ready for his siblings, but decided against attending himself. He had something more important to do.

He didn't want the four to go, so he decided to follow them with his sand. He had only recently learned the technique, so he found a safe spot and focused his attention and chakra. An eye formed from his sand and he sent it up into the sky, easily picking out his four playmates from the crowd. Gaara had expected them to live on the outskirts of the village, but he was surprised to find them slipping past the village gates when the guard wasn't looking. They left the village and kept moving away from it, aiming towards the cliffs in the distance.

The trip took them all night and the dark one ended up carrying Daniel for the past few kilometers, but Gaara managed to follow them the whole way. He didn't mind wasting the whole night watching them, as he didn't sleep and had plenty of Chakra to keep the jutsu up until the quartet made it to their place in the cliffs. It seemed like an odd place to live, but Gaara dismissed that thought in favor of inspecting the others that lived inside of the cliff. There were nine of them in total and each looked as foreign as the quartet that Gaara had played with.

Gaara stayed and watched the group for a while before he commanded the sand eye to come back to him. The sand traveled a lot faster when not following people and it made it back to him within half an hour. It was almost dawn, which meant that Temari would forget herself and threaten to kill him for staying out so late. He didn't want to risk angering her any further; he didn't want his sand to kill her and take away his afternoon snack. So, Gaara gathered his sand up and headed back to his siblings' house.

"Gaara, where were you?" Temari demanded when he got home. She looked like she wished to approach him – whether to strangle him or hug him he didn't know, but neither appealed to him – but thankfully, she stayed back. "I expected you for dinner and you stayed out all night!"

"I was _playing_," Gaara still found that word to be uncomfortable, "and I followed them when they went home."

"Really?" Temari perked up in interest. "Where do they live?"

"Where do who live?" Kankuro asked. "And why are you freaking out about Gaara staying out all night. This isn't the first time that he's done that."

"But I expected him for dinner this time around," Temari told him.

"But why?" Kankuro repeated.

Temari ignored her one brother and turned to Gaara. "Where do they live?"

Gaara blinked. "You know of them?"

"I bumped into the older brunet at the market and we got to talking a bit. Then I saw you playing with him later on," Temari answered.

"They live in the cliffs," Gaara answered. "About a day's walk away. And there were others living there."

"Others? You mean their parents?" Temari asked.

"No, other children like them," Gaara answered.

"Orphans?" Temari asked, mostly talking to herself.

"I have no idea who you're talking about, but it's almost time for lessons. Let's go before Baki yells at us," Kankuro said as he stood up.

"Right," Temari exclaimed, rushing them out the door.


	6. Real Life Ninjas

A/N: A bit of a recap of SG1 canon in this one, but hopefully it's all interesting.

* * *

Chapter Six: Real Life Ninjas

* * *

They crashed as soon as they returned back to the room. Daniel was already asleep when they arrived and he didn't even stir when they settled him in a bed made of robes. Cam was more sleepwalking than anything, although he still was aware enough that he didn't collapse in the makeshift bed until Jack gave him the go ahead. Jack and Teal'c lasted long enough to give a short debriefing letting the others know that nothing happened before falling asleep.

That left the five that had been left behind alone again to unpack and wait for more information. Vala would argue that their going to sleep made the whole situation boring once more. Sam had taken the back of the Mirror off and Jonas was helping her pick through the pieces. Hammond varied from patrols along the entrance of the cliff and going through more boxes. Janet was going through the supplies brought back from the town and Vala was supposed to be helping her. Yet, Janet seemed more interested in the medical supplies than anything else and Vala wasn't interested at all.

Vala was more interested in the scroll that she had found packed in one of the bags and that she currently held. It was old and dusty and obviously something that one of the four had found on the ground, but it called to her. It was in a language that wasn't English, but Vala had been around the gate long enough to be able to understand what it said, even if she couldn't pick out individual words. The fact that Quetesh had spent some time around the Eastern Goa'ulds also helped just a bit, as loath as she was to admit it.

The scroll fascinated her, but she could only read it for so long before she got bored and wanted to try the techniques detailed in the scroll out. She bounced around the room a bit until both Janet and Hammond were giving her dirty looks. Sam was completely immune to Vala's energy, plus she always lost track of the world whenever she was working on a new puzzle, but Jonas kept looking up at her.

"Why don't you go outside and get some more water?" Sam suggested when Vala draped herself over Sam's shoulder.

"All right. Come one, Jonas," Vala cheered as she grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the room.

"Hey," Jonas protested. "We don't even have anything to carry water in!"

"We're not out here for water," Vala informed him even as she led the way up the trail to the water hole. "We're out here to experiment."

"Experiment?" Jonas asked, looking uncertain.

"Here," Vala said as she shoved the scroll into his hands.

"Japanese characters?" Jonas muttered to himself as he quickly scanned the writings.

"I want to try out this energy thing," Vala said.

"Do you really think that this would work?" Jonas asked, able to get the gist of what the scroll said.

"It's worth a try," Vala grinned. They settled down on a nearby rock and poured over the scroll once more. Finally, Vala put the scroll down and focused, drawing on her energy. But nothing happened then, or any other time that the two tried. Finally, they were called back inside due to the heat.

Once inside, the two were tasked with moving useless junk from one box to another in order to empty out all of the half filled boxes. It was work clearly meant for keeping them out of the way – mostly herself, Vala admitted, since Jonas was happy helping Sam out with the Mirror – but it did entertain them. Half of the gold that they found ended up on Vala and the other half was put away only because it was too heavy to wear.

At dinner time, Janet drafted Vala and Jonas to help her cook dinner out of the supplies gotten at the market. It wasn't a great meal, as the boys hadn't bought a lot of perishables, but it was better than the energy bars that they had before. After testing the food one last time for allergens, Janet served up the stew to those that were still awake. It was only after the one group had eaten when the four others woke up.

Daniel was the first up, having slept the longest. He stumbled over to where they were sitting at the entrance to the room and slumped down beside Vala. Janet served him up a bowl of stew and then filled another bowl for Teal'c, the second one up. Jack and am emerged at the same time and settled down to eat.

"So, what was it like?" Vala asked.

"What?" Daniel asked, finally actually waking up.

"The town, what was it like?" Vala asked.

"It seemed consistent with how desert cultures keep their towns. The buildings were short and square for the most part and they have an open market place as well as individual stores," Daniel answered. "The people seemed to be a mix of Arabic and Asian races, yet they seemed to have Japanese names."

"It seems to be a military state, as I saw only the uniform for the military and saw no sign of civilian police," Jack reported. "They also seem to prefer to travel by rooftop rather than using the street and, get this, they're ninja."

"Really?" Sam asked as she blinked. "Like real ninja?"

"They have an academy for it and everything," Jack answered. "They're teaching people around Danny's age to kill."

"What age is this? My real age or my apparent age?" Daniel asked.

"Apparent age, just like the one kid from yesterday," Jack said. "Gaara. Although, there's something else about him that makes people afraid of him, because his own sister was wary about him."

"You met his sister?" Daniel asked.

"What kid are we talking about again?" Sam asked.

"We met this kid named Gaara at the market place and played with him," Jack explained first. "I met his sister when I went to buy weapons. She's the one who actually bought the weapons, convinced that I was going to enroll in the ninja academy. She really didn't give me a chance to refuse."

"That might explain the scroll that we read today," Jonas remarked.

"What scroll?" Daniel asked, looking interested.

Jonas motioned to Vala and Vala reluctantly handed the scroll to Daniel. "It was in one of the shopping bags."

"Chakra exercises?" Daniel read out loud before lapsing into silence while he read.

"What's chakra and how do you exercise it?" Jack asked after a minute.

"Chakra is the energy centres along the spine and they are considered to be a point of biophysical energy of the human body in our world. In this world, Chakra is physical energy mixed with spiritual energy that people can manipulate to their will," Daniel explained.

"Such as sticking to walls?" Jack asked, remembering what Teal'c said back at the market place.

"It might be possible, this says that Chakra is used for all kinds of jutsus, spells of a sort, the three most common of which are Henge, a transforming technique, Kawarimi, a body replacement technique, and Bushin, a cloning technique," Daniel explained.

"Jonas and I were trying to do one of the first lessons," Vala said, "we weren't able to get it right."

"The leaf exercise?" Daniel asked.

"That's the one," Vala confirmed. "We used leaves from the bushes, but they never stuck on our heads."

"Well, do we know if this chakra even exists?" Jack asked.

"We have run into cultures who have thought that technology is magic because they don't understand it," Sam pointed out.

"But there are some worlds that do impossible things, look at Earth for example," Vala said.

"There's the Nox," Cam offered. "You never fully figured out exactly how they do the things that they do."

"They could just have advanced brain chemistry, like they're on the way to ascension," Daniel said.

"McKay was able to do some impressive stuff when he was about to ascend," Sam admitted. "Just don't tell him I said that."

"It's going to be hard to do so," Daniel muttered, putting the scroll down for a minute.

"We're going to get back, one way or another," Jack said, laying a hand on Daniel's arm. "And, if we don't, we'll be okay. Hey, maybe we can be ninjas."

"I thought you were against that?" Jonas asked.

"But he still thinks that the idea is cool," Daniel said, giving Jack a knowing smile.

"All right, I admit it, it is pretty cool." Jack grinned.

"Real life ninjas, of course it's cool," Cam replied.

"I'm not happy about the fact that they're teaching kids how to kill," Jack added. "Kids should be allowed to be kids and you shouldn't be able to sell them weapons." Jack pulled out the Kusarigama from the bag of weapons. "I look like I'm nine and a guy Daniel's age sold me these without batting an eye."

"And what age is that?" Daniel teased.

"Something would be really wrong if a seven year old was allowed to sell weapons to other minors," Jack mused. "Still, it seems wrong to be teaching children these things."

"It might be necessary, if what they say about chakra is true," Daniel said, having returned to analyzing the scroll.

"How's that?" Jack asked.

"It'd make sense to teach people how to handle weaponry and master their bodies before they reach their prime in life and there are a lot of cultures that practice this, if not in the killing arts," Daniel explained. "But, it might also have to do with this chakra."

"What about chakra?" Cam asked.

"Well, we haven't really figured out exactly what it is, but we know that it doesn't come easily." Daniel tilted his head toward Vala. "Chakra, according to the scroll, is made up of spiritual and physical energy. The more in shape physically one is, it would follow that the more chakra one would have. But, it's not just physical energy that one needs to learn, there's also the spiritual energy."

"Spiritual how? Because the only thing that I could think of were the Ori and I never like to think about the Ori," Vala said.

"You know, it might be like the Ori," Daniel said, blinking in surprise.

"You think that there are Ori in this universe?" Cam asked.

"Not on this world, no," Daniel answered. "We were at the city all day and there wasn't a prayer hour or a public burning."

"Thank god," Vala said as she shuddered.

"But, the Ori used the people's belief as energy, which might be what chakra does," Daniel explained.

"Yeah, not really getting what you're talking about, Daniel," Jack said.

"I'm totally lost," Jonas sighed.

"It might be time for that debriefing that you promised me," George said. "Start from the beginning and don't leave anything out, we can pretty much figure that we're dead."

"Yeah," Jack replied, looking down at the ground.

"We all knew it would happen someday, son," George said.

"Right. So, you guys remember up to that one boring conference, right?" Jack asked.

"Right," George nodded.

"Okay, so we had a few tangles with various Goa'ulds and we even went up against Anubis. Luckily, Danny showed up and saved our asses," Jack started, glossing over most of the details. It had been seven years and what had passed had passed, after all. "He got kicked out of the ascended club for that, though, and ended up naked on another planet without his memory."

"Thanks for telling them that fact," Daniel grumbled.

"You're welcome," Jack cheerfully replied. "We managed to drag him back home and he regained him memory after Jonas went back to try and restructure his world. That was about the time that Anubis' Super Soldiers showed up. They were practically zombies and about as hard to kill."

"Soon after that was when Janet died," Daniel softly said.

Janet shifted so that she could link hands with Daniel and Sam. On his other side, Vala grabbed Daniel's free hand.

"It was a rescue mission and you came with us to treat a soldier's injuries," Daniel continued. "You saved his life, but you were killed by a staff blast."

"I took Cassie in until she left for college. We still keep in contact and she's doing really well in school," Sam told Janet.

"I'm glad," Janet said, a few tears trailing down her face.

"The next big event would be my downloading another Ancient Repository once more," Jack said as he took over again.

"Of course, he still couldn't handle all of the information," Daniel said.

"But, I knew enough to find us a ZPM and find the outpost in time to save the earth," Jack shot back.

"Ooh, this is where I come in," Cam said.

"Anubis was about to attack the earth and General O'Neill took us to find an Ancient power cell, a ZPM," Sam explained. "You had been promoted at that point, General, and Assigned aboard the Prometheus. Doctor Elizabeth Weir took over Stargate Command in your stead. Anyway, Anubis attacked at Antarctica, which is where General O'Neill found an Ancient Outpost."

"I fought in that battle, saved SG1's ship," Cam interjected.

"I used an Ancient weapon to defeat Anubis' fleet and then I put myself into status until Thor showed up," Jack said.

"Meanwhile, the human replicators escaped and I was kidnapped," Sam said.

"We rescued Sam after Thor woke Jack up and Jack created a weapon to destroy the replicators out of the Ancient knowledge," Daniel said.

"But, by that time there was a replicator clone of Carter running around," Jack added.

"Once things settled down, we were able to fully explore the outpost in Antarctica," Daniel continued, "where I discovered the location of Atlantis."

"Atlantis is an Ancient City built so that it functions as a spaceship and is located in the Pegasus Galaxy, which means that we need a ZPM to dial the gate," Sam explained. "We sent an expedition there soon after discovering the location and have learned a lot about the Ancients."

"Hey, you skipped over my promotion," Jack cut in. "I was promoted after we got Carter back so that Doctor Weir could deal with the outpost. I was put in charge of the SGC."

"A hectic time that was," Daniel muttered.

"Hey, I wasn't that bad," Jack replied.

"On your first official day, the SGC was overrun by plants and you thought that Ba'al had kidnapped us," Daniel pointed out.

"I was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel when Jack was promoted to Brigadier General," Sam said, "with Jack in command of the SGC, SG1 became a three man team."

"Sam was in charge," Daniel added.

"And she did a good job handing everything from human replicators to Mayborne," Jack said. "Things proceeded in true SG1 fashion until we came up with a way to kill all of those damn bugs."

"We liberated the Jaffa's holy temple at Dakara," Teal'c said. "It was a huge victory for my people and the Free Jaffa Nation was created."

"I'm glad to hear it, son," George said.

"With a bit of help from Ba'al of all people, we were able to link up all of the stargates and send a pulse through them to destroy the replicators," Sam said.

"Which was good, because they were getting to be a major pain and had infested the SGC before the pulse went off," Jack said.

"Meanwhile, I managed to convince Oma to deal with Anubis," Daniel said. "Anyway, after that, we kind of drifted a little."

"You retired," Jack said to George," And I was promoted again before taking over your job, putting General Hank Landry in charge of the SGC."

"I was doing a lot of work for Area 51," Sam said.

"I was helping Bra'tac form the government for the Free Jaffa Nation on Dakara," Teal'c said.

"And I was getting ready to leave for Atlantis," Daniel said.

"The next part of the story is mine," Cam said.

"And mine," Vala chimed in.

"I told you how I fought in the Antarctica battle and saved SG1's lives," Cam said, "but my plane took a hit while dong so and we had a hard landing. It took me a little over a year to get fit for duty again."

"It would have taken longer if it weren't for us," Jack said.

"SG1 all visited me and thanked me. General O'Neill went one step further and offered me any assignment I wanted. I asked for command of SG1 and was given it," Cam said. He darted a glare over at Jack. "Of course, he forgot to mention that I would have to start from scratch."

"Hey, it was still SG1, just not what you expected," Jack defended.

"He might have had to create a whole new team if it hadn't been for me," Vala said.

"She's the teammate that we literally picked up," Jack said. "She just kind of stuck with us."

"I wasn't having much luck getting SG1 back together, but then Vala did show up," Cam admitted, "and handcuffed herself to Daniel."

"That was the second time she made me miss out on going to Atlantis," Daniel said.

"The first time I high-jacked the Prometheus and the second time it was my choice in handcuffs," Vala proudly said.

"She used Jaffa prisoner handcuffs, made to kill both the Jaffa and the prisoner if they were ever separated for a certain amount of time," Teal'c explained.

"It wasn't the best choice, I admit, but I had to do something to get Daniel to listen to me about the treasure on earth and keep me around long enough for me to get my share of it," Vala said.

"Anyway, it turned out that her information was actually good and we found Merlin's treasure," Daniel said.

"We got part of the team together to explore it," Cam said.

"It turns out that Merlin was an Ancient and he experimented on earth, where the Ancients couldn't see," Daniel said. "The cavern was a trove of Ancient devices, one of which transported my and Vala's consciousness over to the Ancient's first galaxy."

"And that's where the Ori come in, they discovered that we were strangers, burned me alive and brought be back to life and declared war on us," Vala said.

"The Ori are ascended beings who use religion to gather energy from their believers. The people in that galaxy actually believed that the Ori were gods," Daniel said.

"With that information, SG1 was finally brought back together," Cam said.

"The war with the Ori is still going on, but we've mostly beaten them back," Jack interjected, noticing the setting sun.

"We learned a lot of technology from this fight; from the Supergate that the Ori created to the dimensional work that we learned from Merlin," Sam said.

"Anyway, we'll tell you more about it later, sir, but we should probably give you a break," Jack said, motioning to the dying light.

"You're right," George said, "but, first, may I ask how I died?"

"Me as well," Jonas spoke up.

"The Ori swept the galaxy, trying to convert worlds. Those who resisted were killed and they conquered Jonas' homeworld," Sam said.

"And you're currently in a coma following a massive heart attack, sir," Jack said. "The doctors say that you're not going to recover."

George nodded in acknowledgement as he stood up. "We should seal the room off."

"We can take the first watch," Jack said, looking to Teal'c for his agreement.

"I'll take the second watch," Cam volunteered.

"I'll join you," Jonas offered.

"Right, let's get moving," Jack said.

They cleared the area before heading back into the room. The large doors were shut and Jack and Teal'c set up shop in front of them as everyone else went to the makeshift beds.

Cam seemed to be only resting, which made sense, given how he had only gotten up about an hour ago. However, Jack noted with faint worry, Daniel seemed to have dropped back into sleep.


	7. Chakra

A/N: And now the action starts.

* * *

Chapter Seven: Chakra

* * *

Night passed without disturbance. Midway through the night they switched watches with Jack falling into a light doze while Teal'c simply meditated.

People started waking up about an hour or two after sunrise. They could tell this only by the faint light that managed to make its way into the room. The light increased significantly when the doors were opened, which woke up the last few sleepers.

Sam was already hard at work on the mirror when Daniel finally woke up. He rubbed his face as he wished for coffee. Despite sleeping for most of the day yesterday and through the night, he still felt groggy. Coffee would have cured that, he was sure, but they had been unable to find anything resembling coffee at the market, much to his and everyone else's dismay.

Vala was the only one still asleep when Daniel got up and grabbed a piece of fruit for breakfast. Vala, Sam, and Jonas were the only ones in the room at the moment, although Daniel could faintly hear the others' voices coming from outside. Daniel nodded at Sam and Jonas before sitting down with the tablet that he had found the day before.

The scroll about chakra made the tablet easier to read. For one, the scroll was more modern than the tablet, which meant that he could now recognize several more characters, and for the other, Daniel now understood what the tablet meant when it talked about chakra. Understanding chakra made the subject of the tablet more worrisome, though. Creatures of energy, demons, being sealed inside of people. It reminded Daniel of the Ori even more, considering the connection that might exist between chakra and the energy that the Ori lived off of.

Daniel had a suspicion that there was a Stargate somewhere on the planet. While texts appeared to them to be in a foreign language, the original language of the planet, they could understand the natives' spoken words. Plus, there was the fact that Daniel could almost instinctively understand what the texts said when he didn't concentrate on the actual words. The Stargate probably wasn't close by to their location, but there was hope that it existed. Daniel hadn't mentioned it to anyone just yet, but he was fairly sure that the others knew of it. They spent so much time around the Stargate, after all, that they were familiar with the affect that it had.

Daniel put aside thoughts of the Stargate and focused back on the tablet and the other pieces of writing that had been found. It was fascinating.

Meanwhile, more effort went into making the room livable. More junk was cleared from the floors and parts of the room were sectioned off more clearly. The area that they were using for sleeping was left alone, partially because of Vala and also because the area was out of the way enough already. The space that Sam was using with the mirror was left alone, but portioned off further. Beyond that, the only other area that they divided off was a space to cook near the entrance of the room. For the most part, they planned to cook outside, but they were sure that there would be times when they wouldn't be able to. Sandstorms were the biggest threat, given that they were in a desert climate, but that wasn't the only possibility of disaster.

Traps were created outside on the cliff face. They didn't have motion sensors with lights, but they did have two generals, one lieutenant colonel with another one advising, a Jaffa, and a thief when Vala finally woke up. The group was able to set a few good traps, mostly warning them of anyone coming close to their hide out.

"We should wait as long as we can before heading back into town," George said when they broke for lunch. "And we'll send a different team next time."

"So as to not start a pattern," Jack agreed.

"We don't need to rush in this circumstance. We have shelter and supplies, so we can stand to take our time in learning about the culture of this world," George said.

"Which means we shouldn't give ourselves away too soon," Cam said.

"Exactly," Jack said.

"So, has anyone figured out this chakra thing yet?" Vala asked.

"No, but I really want to," Jonas said.

"I bet if anyone could, it'd be Daniel," Jack said. "He's used to doing weird things."

"Well, I'm sure it's possible for all of us to do it," Daniel said. "I might have a few ideas thanks to being ascended and receiving Merlin's memories, but we've all had some experiences with alien technology."

"So, how do you think chakra works?" Jack asked.

"I can only speculate at this time, but if we focus in a particular way," Daniel trailed off.

"Well, that's helpful," Jack said.

Daniel frowned. "Here, I'll try." He formed a hand sign from the scroll and concentrated. Slowly his skin began to glow a faint blue. He kept it up for a minute before releasing that and the hand sign.

"Ooh, let me try," Vala cheered. She mimicked the hand sign and concentrated. Nothing happened for a minute, but eventually a faint glow came from her skin. She could only keep it up for a few seconds before it faded. "It's hard."

"Should we even bother to learn this stuff?" Jack asked, still watching Vala.

"It could be useful, I guess," Cam said.

"I'm going to learn it," Vala said, forming the hand sign once more. "I want to at least learn how to do the henge. Imagine, you could look like anyone with that technique."

"Easier to steal stuff that way?" Daniel asked, giving her a knowing look.

"It would be good for certain ops," Cam mused. "I mean, there were several missions that I wished we could have blended in a bit better."

"It would be useful if we ever got back to our universe," Jack said. A determined look settled on his face. "I won't be pushed aside like the other clones."

"It's different on this side of the fence," Sam acknowledged.

"So, we learn how to use chakra and then we go back and steal the socks off of SG1," Vala cheered.

"Show us again, Daniel," Cam said. He formed a facsimile of the hand sign and frowned at it. "Is this right?"

"Like this," Vala said, showing Cam how to put his fingers. "And then you just concentrate."

Vala and Daniel went around helping everyone with their hand signs before they settled down to glow blue themselves. 'Just concentrate' wasn't the best advice ever, but that was all that Daniel and Vala could really say. It worked, but it was different from anything that they had every really done. Yet, even with the vague advice, they were all able to glow blue at different strengths. Next to Daniel, Teal'c had the strongest glow, but Vala and Cam were fast catching up.

At the end of it, Daniel felt confident enough to attempt the henge. He formed the hand sign from the scroll, concentrated and called out the name of the jutsu. He briefly flickered to look like Jack's current form before he collapsed.

"Woah," Jack called out as he caught the young archeologist.

"Daniel," Sam and Vala called out at the same time.

"Let me look at him," Janet said as she hurried over. She checked his pulse while making sure that he was breathing properly. She frowned when she laid her hand on his forehead. "He's got a fever."

"A fever?" Jack asked. "How'd he get a fever?"

"This is a new world and we currently have new bodies, it's not so surprising that he's caught something," Janet said. She shot Daniel a worried look. "What is surprising is that it's taken hold of him so quickly."

"What do we do?"Sam asked.

"Let's get him inside," Janet said as she stood up. "We need to get him cooled off and I need to take another look through the supplies that you brought back."

"Do you think that we could be sick as well?" Jack asked. He surrendered Daniel over to Teal'c to carry in, seeing as the Jaffa was still the strongest amongst them. Teal'c carefully carried Daniel inside the room and the others trailed after him. Daniel was put down on the nearest bed and Sam scrambled to dampen a cloth that was put on his head.

"We won't know until later," Janet replied, giving him a quick look to check him over. "I have no idea what this is and why it's affected Daniel so badly."

"This chakra seems to take a toll on the body, not unlike exercising, could it have worn Daniel's defenses down?" Jonas asked.

"But Teal'c glowed just as much as Danny did, and longer, too, and he isn't down for the count," Jack pointed out.

"The trip down to town seemed to take a lot out of him, though," Cam said. "When I got up for night watch, Daniel was asleep."

"Yeah, I noticed that last night, but I just thought it was the lack of coffee," Jack said. "I didn't know that he was sick."

"You weren't the only one, Colonel," Janet reassured as she came back to the group. She only brought back one bottle from the collection of medical supplies that they had brought back. Of course, they weren't stocking an infirmary, so the group had mostly bought bandages and the like.

"Is he going to be okay?" Jack asked.

"If we can get the fever down." Janet cracked the seal on the bottle. "I want to see if we can wake him up and get him to take this. From what I've been able to determine, this is the local ibuprofen."

"Yeah, that's what we figured when we picked it up," Jack said, "but is it safe for Daniel to take it?"

"It should be," Janet said. "We should also see if we can get him to drink as much as we can."

"Come on, Danny, wake up," Jack said as he tapped at Daniel's cheeks. Daniel moaned and shifted, so Jack tapped again.

This time Jack was rewarded by Daniel's eyes cracking open. "Jack?"

"Hey, Danny," Jack replied, grinning in relief.

"How do you feel?" Janet asked, moving to check his vitals again.

"What happened?" Daniel asked as he shrugged to sit up. Janet lightly pushed down on his chest to stop him.

"You just collapsed, Daniel," Jack answered. "If you were that tired of teaching us, you could have let us know."

"What?" Daniel asked.

"You've got a fever that we're trying to get down," Janet said. She held up the ibuprofen pill and the cup of water. "I want you to take these."

"How'd I get sick? I was fine just a bit ago," Daniel said as Jack helped him sit up.

"New bodies, remember?" Jack asked as he helped Daniel up.

"How could I forget?" Daniel asked, holding up a shrunken hand to make his point.

"You just got hit harder than the rest of us," Jack continued as if he hadn't heard Daniel.

"So the rest of us are going to get sick?" Daniel asked, looking towards Janet for confirmation.

"I wouldn't be surprised," Janet said, "but I'm hoping that's not the case."

"Me too," Daniel trailed off, dropping to sleep once more.

"If I had my infirmary I'd be able to figure out what he's got," Janet grumbled to herself.

"Doctor?" George prompted.

She just shook her head and sighed. "I have no idea what we're dealing with here. It could be anything from a simple cold to some kind of alien virus. We're in an entirely new environment here with nearly blank slates for bodies and we're flying blind here."

"It'll be okay," Sam said, putting her hand on Janet's shoulder.

"I just wish that I had a lab where I could test to see what this is and how serious it is," Janet said.

"We passed a clinic on our way out of the city, right?" Jack asked Teal'c.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Cam asked, grinning at Jack.

"It's too far for Daniel to travel," Janet pointed out. "He needs to be kept cool and even at night he's not strong enough to walk. And I'm not sure if I should allow anyone of you to try and carry him there."

"Yeah, we can't take Daniel there," Jack said.

"But we can take his blood there, can't we?" Cam completed.

"Take a sample there to test?" Janet asked to clarify.

"Would the clinic even do that?" Sam asked.

"Never know until we try," Jack said, flashing a quick smile.

"And if that doesn't work, we'll try another way," Cam added.

"When would you like to leave?" George asked.

"As soon as we can," Janet replied.

"Right, let's get ready and go," Jack said as he stood up. "Teal'c and Cam are with me."

"I'm going with you," Janet said, standing up with a determined look. "Daniel will have enough watchers for now and it's only a fever at the moment. He'll be fine until we get back."

"Given how you're possibly the only one of us who would be able to do the tests, I can't argue," George said with a sigh. "Just be careful."

"Watch over Daniel for me," Janet replied with a nod. She turned back to the grocery bag with a purpose. "I just have to get a sample from Daniel and I'll be ready to go."

As Jack, Teal'c and Cam got things together to travel across the desert during the day, Janet carefully made a small cut on Daniel's arm and collected some of his blood in a glass vial. She bandaged the cut and then got ready to go with the rest of the group. The vial of blood was heavily insulated in a pouch tied to Janet's belt through the trip in the hot sun.


	8. Breaking and Entering

A/N: Another chapter from the Sand Sibling's POV. Thanks for reading and reviewing!

* * *

Chapter Eight: Breaking and Entering

* * *

Gaara had a slight look of disappointment when he came home for dinner. Others wouldn't have seen it, but Temari did because she felt it herself. It had been days since Jack and his group had come into town and they hadn't been back at all. Not even one of the other five that Gaara said existed had come into the village. She had wanted to talk to Jack once more, to try and convince him to join the academy. It would be tricky, since he was an orphan, but it could be done. This was the year that she would be attending regular classes as a public relations function and she had been hoping to have someone there who wouldn't be afraid to talk to her.

"I don't get what you're so upset over. It's just a bunch of foreigners," Kankuro said as he fiddled with his puppet.

"Foreigners who don't know who we are, and therefore will talk to us," Temari shot back. She shot a glance at Gaara to make sure that he was focused elsewhere. "Do you want to play with Gaara?"

"You've got a point there," Kankuro mused as he looked over at Gaara. "The foreigners can have him."

Besides, you haven't even met them, so how can you say something against them?" Temari pointed out.

"Easy, I don't care about them," Kankuro said and Temari scoffed at him.

"They're here," Gaara said as he stood up.

"Really?" Temari asked, looking at the fading sunlight. She had expected them to travel at dark, not to arrive before sunset, given what Gaara had said about where they lived.

Gaara walked out of the room without replying. Any other kid would have run with excitement but Gaara was expressionless and walked as he always did. Temari was the one who raced after him and Kankuro sighed before following both.

Gaara led them over to the gates and then stared on a wandering path back into the city. Temari was surprised when they came to a stop in front of a clinic. Then she noticed the four figures hidden in the shadows. One of them was kneeling in front of the door, doing something. Kankuro snorted at the sight and the figures whirled around, two of them brandishing staves. The way that they shifted brought their faces into light and Temari recognized Jack and two of the boys who had been with him on the first trip. The youngest of the brunets wasn't there, though, and a redheaded girl accompanied them instead.

"Don't scare us like that, kid," Jack said as the two shouldered their weapons.

"What are you doing?" Temari asked.

"I know that you guys were too good to be true. It's obvious that you're taking something if you wanted to play with Gaara," Kankuro said. "I'm not surprised to find you breaking into the clinic."

"Gaara's not a bad kid," Jack replied. "You'd probably know that if you interacted with him more."

"Hey, I interact with him. I stay away from him and he doesn't kill me," Kankuro said.

"Where's Daniel?" Gaara broke in.

"Left him at home for this one," the second brunet offered as Jack turned back to picking the lock.

"He's sick, which is why we're here," the redheaded girl answered.

"Breaking into the clinic," Kankuro added. "You know, you can just take him to see the doctor, like a regular person."

"It wasn't wise to move him, we live too far away," the redhead answered.

"Over at the cliffs across the desert," Gaara said.

The group shot him startled looks. "How'd you know that?" Jack asked.

"I followed you with my sand eye," Gaara answered.

"Sand eye?" the second brunet questioned.

"Would it be safe to assume that this 'sand eye' is made out of chakra?" the dark skinned boy asked.

"And sand," Gaara confirmed.

"Can we get back to the fact that you're breaking and entering?" Kankuro asked, scowling at all of them.

"Well, we were going to just ask the doctors for a favor, but we got here too late," Jack drawled.

"So now we're trying another way," the second brunet added, a hint of a drawl in his own voice.

"I still don't get how you can just casually break into a building like that, especially a free clinic," Kankuro said.

"If it's a free clinic, then does it really matter if we rummage around unnoticed?" Jack asked. He huffed a sigh. "Look, kid, we're not going to be clearing the place up. The doc's just going to check a few things and that'll be all."

"Is Daniel really sick?" Temari asked, thinking back to the young boy who actually played with Gaara and looked like he had fun.

"We don't know just what's wrong with him, but yeah," Jack answered.

"Then go on," Temari nodded towards the door.

"Temari," Kankuro yelped, turning to look at her.

"Shh," she hushed him. "His brother is sick and he needs this. Beyond that, we're ninjas and ninjas are meant to be sneaky. We'll go in with them and make sure that they aren't up to anything, if you feel that strongly about it." In all actuality, she wanted to follow them in to find out what was wrong with the young boy, not because she was worried that they were going to steal what could be taken as recreation drugs. Plus, she didn't think that Gaara was going to let it go just like that; he seemed to be unusually taken to the group of kids, especially the one who was sick.

"If you say so," Kankuro said, his voice making it clear that he thought they were all stupid. "Just don't tell them I'm with you when ANBU catches you."

"You mean you want to be charged separately for breaking and entering?" the second brunet asked, grinning at Kankuro.

"Got it," Jack said as he straightened up and opened up the door. He held the door open as he motioned everyone inside.

"This way," the redhead said as she led them into the back room, separate from the examination rooms.

"Never been back here before," Kankuro commented, looking around while trying not to look too interested.

"You know what you're doing?" Temari asked

"I should be able to figure it out," the redhead answered as she headed over to the likely looking machinery. "It's not the first time that I've had to figure out new technology."

"So, how've you been, kid?" Jack asked Gaara. Temari split her attention between Jack and the redhead.

"Why haven't you come back to the village?" Gaara asked.

"It's quite a distance between here and where we stay, kiddo," Jack said as he shrugged. "We haven't really been gone that long considering."

"Why don't you live in town?" Temari asked. "Even without parents, you should be able to find some place to stay. You can even sign up for the Academy."

"They probably won't get in," Kankuro said.

"Kankuro," Temari hissed.

"You know as well as I do that they're suspicious," Kankuro exclaimed. "They broke in here, who's to say that they aren't going to break in other places? What if they're spies?"

"We're not spies," the second brunet said.

"We told you, our friend is sick. Besides, it's not as though we're stealing anything." Jack held up a few coins and then laid them down on the countertop, "See?"

"It's still suspicious, so many of you living in a cave of all places," Kankuro replied.

"We only just arrived in this area and we thought that we would stay someplace free of charge while we scouted the area," Jack said.

"Right," Kankuro scoffed, but fell silent.

"Are you going to stay?" Gaara asked.

Jack sighed. "We can't promise you anything. We kind of got stranded from our village, so we're hoping to find a way back, but there is a possibility that we won't be able to and then we'll stay."

"I want you to stay, so that you can play with me," Gaara said.

"That'd be great," Jack said, grinning down at Gaara.

"This looks like a virus similar to influenza," the redhead interrupted as she pulled away from the microscope. She headed across to the medicine cabinet and started browsing through. "I should be able to find something to help Daniel here. As well as Vaccines for the rest of us."

"Shots?" Jack wrinkled his nose.

"Shots," the redhead confirmed. She took down three bottles from the cabinet and put them inside of her pouch. She then took out several syringes and put those in the pouch as well. She then crossed back over to the microscope and started to clean up from her tests.

"Ready to go, Doc?" Jack asked as soon as the redhead was finished.

"I'm ready," the redhead replied.

Jack took the lead, ushering them out of the building. Temari was one of the last ones out of the building, along with Gaara and as soon as they were out, Jack knelt down in front of the door and locked it once again.

"So, I guess this is it," Jack said as they walked out into the street.

It was that moment when the ANBU dropped down from above them, surrounding them on all sides.

"Maybe not," she murmured.

"I knew you guys were going to be caught," Kankuro muttered before they were all knocked out.


	9. Interrogation Tactics

A/N: And back to Jack. Thanks for reading and reviewing!

* * *

Chapter Nine: Interrogation Tactics

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When Jack woke up he was in an interrogation room, or at least what he assumed to be an interrogation room. It was small, bland, with only a table and chairs bolted to the floor and all of those elements suggested an interrogation room, but the thing that was the clincher was the large mirror stretching across the wall that Jack was facing. Yep, Jack was certain that this was an interrogation room that he was in.

"Well, crap," he muttered. At least he wasn't handcuffed or tied down to anything, although he wasn't sure if he would be able to escape, either. Still, it was better than the places he usually ended up in – the places that he had thought that he would no longer end up in. The thing about being locked in an interrogation room was that he had no idea where the rest of his group was and then there was the fact that Daniel was still sick and half a day away.

Jack did not have to wait long until the door opened and a man entered the room. The man looked pretty nondescript, but he reminded Jack of all of the black ops soldiers than he had known. Not only in the way that he moved, but by the sculpted, black clothes that he wore and the poker face that he had on. The only thing out of place from the black ops look was the headband that the man wore with the metal plate that had some sort of symbol on it. It reminded Jack of the letter 'i' written in that strange bubble letter font.

"So, do you normally knock people out for no reason in the middle of the night?" Jack asked, leaning back in his chair and raising his eyebrows at the guy.

"You were witnessed breaking into the clinic," the guy said, vaguely looking as though Jack should try to pull the other one.

"Breaking into the clinic?" Jack tried the clueless route.

"I wouldn't try to pull one over on me, kid, because it's not going to work," the guy scoffed. "Right now you're here for breaking and entering and also under suspicion of kidnapping."

"Kidnapping?" Jack blurted out. "Who?"

"The Kazekage's children," the guy answered, glaring at Jack.

Jack blinked to himself, wondering who on earth the Kazekage was. "Temari and her brothers?" Jack hazarded a guess.

"You want to tell me what you were doing breaking into the clinic with the Kazekage's children?" the man asked in reply.

Jack shrugged. "We met them outside the clinic and they decided to tag along. If I had known that people would freak out, I would have sent them off to bed." Jack smirked. "Unless you regularly knock people out when arresting them."

"What were you doing breaking into the clinic?" the man asked.

"What were you doing spying on us?" Jack shot back.

"Not doing anything illegal; that's what you were doing." The man scowled at Jack. "Now, spill."

"What do people normally do when they go to a clinic?" Jack replied.

"They wait until the building is opened and they make an appointment, just like everyone else," the man answered. "Most importantly, they're examined by a doctor and they don't prescribe themselves." The man dropped a bottle of pills onto the table. Jack vaguely recognized it as one of the bottles that Janet picked out from the clinic.

"Those aren't for me," Jack informed the man.

"Then who are they for?" the man asked, clearly not believing him.

"Look, we have a friend at home who's sick," Jack caved. He motioned towards the pills on the table. "Those are supposed to make him better."

"On whose authority?" the man asked.

"My redheaded friend knows more than she looks like she does," Jack answered, figuring that it was better than 'my friend is really forty one years old and a trained medical professional.' The truth didn't really sound believable and he figured that he was in enough trouble already without the guy deciding that he was lying. And, on the other side, he didn't want to chance the guy believing his story and insisting on an answer that Jack really didn't want to give. So, he would go with a cover story – at least this time it wasn't 'deep space radar telemetry.'

The guy frowned at him. "Your friend knows how to diagnose people and prescribe them medicine?"

"Ah, well, she's fairly sure that my friend who's sick has the same thing that she had last year and she went to the doctors and got the same prescription as that, so she figured that if we just got that it would be fine," Jack lied, motioning towards the pill bottle once again. He hoped that it sounded believable and one thing was true in all of that: they both had allergies.

"And why didn't you just take your sick friend in to see the doctor at the clinic?" the guy asked. "You shouldn't assume when it comes to health."

"He was too sick for us to get him to the clinic, so we figured that we would go for him," Jack answered.

"And where are his parents in all of this?" the man asked, quirking an eyebrow at Jack. "Shouldn't his parents be taking your friend to the clinic?"

"You see, when I said that he's our friend, it's true, but you see, he's also my brother," Jack said, getting the idea that the guy wouldn't just let them go to get back to Daniel. He had no idea quite why they were being paid that much attention by the authorities – the stern-faced man seemed like a bit overkill for kids breaking into a clinic for the first time.

"Your brother? Why didn't you say so earlier?" the man asked, sounding as though he were suspicious of Jack now.

"Because all of my friends seem like family to me after a while," Jack answered. That was the truth, after all; SG1 was his family now. "So, you see, it's my responsibility to get Daniel his medicine."

"Daniel?" The man quirked his eyebrow once more and Jack wondered if he was being deliberately obtuse.

"My brother," Jack replied, rolling his eyes. "His name is Daniel."

"So how is it your responsibility to get Daniel, you said his name was? To get Daniel the medicine that he needs?" the man asked, going back to the parental issue once again.

"My parents work at odd hours, sir," Jack lied. "It's my job to take care of the boys while they are busy."

"The boys?" The man seemed back to being obtuse. Of course the man was also fishing for more information; why, Jack didn't know.

"The brunet with me is also my brother," Jack revealed. He figured that they could explain away Daniel, Cam, and him as being related along with Janet and George being related. Sam and Jonas could go in either family, but Vala and Teal'c would be difficult to place, as their looks were so different. Maybe one of the families adopted children, as Jack wasn't quite sure how the 'half siblings' excuse would work in this culture. That was more of a Daniel or Jonas thing to figure out.

"So you all decided that instead of telling your parents that your sibling was sick, you'd go out and fetch the medicine yourselves?" the man asked.

"That's about the size of it," Jack agreed. He shrugged, knowing that it was a weird cover story, but quite sure that he didn't want to chance this alternate universe, alien world's social services.

"So, where do you live?" the man asked.

"Oh, around here," Jack answered. "I don't suppose we could just pay a fine for breaking and entering and then be let go, can we?"

"What about the pills?" the man asked, picking the bottle up and rattling it.

"They'd come with us, of course," Jack answered, crossing his arms.

"You wouldn't be paying a fine for them?" the man asked. He still held the bottle up, although he had stopped shaking it.

"It's a free clinic, right?" Jack asked. "They would have treated Daniel without any problems if we went about it the normal way and we already left money for the drugs, so we're good there."

"I'd rather have a doctor look over your brother and letting him prescribe the drugs, if you don't mind," the man said, curling his fingers around the bottle before putting it away in the vest that he wore.

"I trust in my friend," Jack said, wishing that the guy would just give it up and let them go. "If she says that she knows what Daniel has and what can cure him, then she knows what Daniel has and what medicine he needs to take in order to get better."

"Unfortunately, I do not agree with your observation and I'm going to have to insist that we take your brother to the doctor," the man said and Jack wondered where the black ops mask went. "If needed, we can even bring a medic nin along to stabilize him until we get him to the hospital."

"Our place is kind of far away; you don't have to go to the trouble of fetching Daniel," Jack said in one last ditch effort. "Just let us go and we'll bring Daniel in ourselves."

"How far away is kind of far away?" the man asked, not sounding intimidated by Jack's statement.

"Out in the desert, a good day's travel away," Jack admitted, knowing that it was vague enough that no one could tell exactly where they were staying. Of course, they had already told Temari and her brothers where they lived, but Jack was fairly sure that they wouldn't spill the information to the police or ninjas or whoever was interrogating them.

"We can do that, no problem," the man said. He grinned at the disgruntled look on Jack's face as he stood up. "I'll go round up a few of the guys for the mission, so you should get ready, too."

"I told you, we can take care of it by ourselves," Jack tried once more, scowling at the man.

"Come on, kid, we'll get you back to your friends for a few minutes. You might not be a threat, as far as I can tell, but that doesn't mean that you can just wander around," the man said, ignoring Jack's protests.

Jack reluctantly got up from the table and followed the man out of the room. The man led him down the hall lined with metal doors and came to a stop in front of a plain, ordinary door with a window in it. Through it, Jack could see the rest of his group sitting around a table.

The man paused before opening the door and turned back to Jack. "By the way, my name's Yukio Toshiro, what's yours?"

"Jack," Jack absently answered, still puzzling over the way the man's name had switched order in his brain automatically. It was a good thing he didn't plan on giving any last names; he wasn't sure just how their names would come out with the slight Stargate influence. Already he was fairly sure that they were attaching honorifics to the end of names, although it was something that half the time he wasn't aware of doing because they just slipped in one ear and out the other.

"Right, in you go, Jack, and reassure your friends," the man said as he opened the door. "Be ready to leave in about half an hour or so."

Jack allowed himself to be ushered into the room, smiling at his group. Since Toshiro was still watching him, Jack wrapped an arm around Janet's shoulders in a half hug.

"Well, kids," he said when the door finally shut and the lock clicked, signifying that they were left alone, "the jig is up, or at least halfway up. Good news is that Daniel's going to get the help he needs and I don't think we're in too much trouble about the B and E, but the bad news is that my interrogator wants to help us."

"How bad is it?" Cam asked.

"He's going to go fetch Daniel and probably the others; he wouldn't let us diagnose Daniel and I couldn't exactly tell him that we have our own trained doctor," Jack said with a shrug.

"Yeah, that wouldn't really work," Cam agreed. He frowned as he sat back down in his seat. "So, what happens now?"

"Now I go with the man and pick up Daniel and the rest of the kids, I suppose," Jack answered. "Unless you think we can all sneak out of here?"

"I believe that we are in one of their military bases, O'Neill," Teal'c informed them.

"It would make sense, what with the interrogation room I woke up in," Jack replied. "That reminds me, did they talk with anyone else?"

"No, it was just you, although they did keep an eye on us the whole time you were gone," Cam answered.

"Lucky me," Jack grumbled.

"So, how do you think they're going to react when you lead them to the cavern?" Cam asked, fiddling with what looked to be a game piece that had been left on the table.

"I'll tell them that we've only just moved here and that our parents are nomads, or maybe that we found the place and decided that it would be a cool hangout." Jack shrugged. "I still haven't figured out how many parents there are, though."

"I don't think that we should have parents at all, if we really are letting them onto our base – which I think we should," Janet said, pinning Jack with a look. "I am sure in my diagnoses, but I would feel better if Daniel were at the proper facilities to handle an illness such as that. It is also obvious that they will not allow us to go on our own."

"I tried so many times," Jack groaned. He ran a hand down his face. "Okay, what do you suggest that I tell him, Doc?"

"Tell him that we're orphans who live nearby this village and we decided to move here," Janet said. "There's no real way that we can explain away the absence of at least three parents. Even if we manage to fool them for the pickup, they will not allow us to leave without contacting our parents and we know of no one to pretend to be them."

Cam nodded to himself. "We could tell them that we wanted to check out the village first before trying to get a place there and we managed to stumble upon the cavern at the right time. It's all true in a way."

"And we did not inform this man who interrogated you of this fact because we do not trust anyone at this point in time," Teal'c added.

"Orphans, right place right time, don't trust anyone; got it," Jack muttered to himself.

The door opened up and Toshiro stepped into the room. "I've got a team together and we're ready to go. Jack's going to accompany us and show us where to go, but we'd like the rest of you to stay here for now." Toshiro glanced around. "Someone will come by with some food in a bit, so feel free to pester him for whatever you need."

"I'll see you guys later," Jack said, nodding to his team before following Toshiro out of the room. "So, we're off to see the wizard?"

Toshiro blinked at him, not getting the reference, but motioned down the hall. "This way."


	10. Curiosity

A/N: Another chapter from Temari's POV. Thanks for reading and reviewing. :)

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Chapter Ten: Curiosity

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Temari awoke to find herself in the infirmary at ANBU headquarters with her teacher trying to talk to Gaara. Kankuro was in the bed next to hers, though he still seemed to be unconscious. Temari sat up, repressing a groan as she moved. "What happened?"

"We got caught, just like I said we would," Kankuro answered. Temari looked over to see his eyes blink open.

"I thought you were still out of it," Temari grumbled.

"The ANBU were unsure whether this was a plot against you or not, so he thought best to knock you out," Baki answered.

"They didn't knock Gaara out, I bet," Kankuro muttered to himself.

"They asked me to come with them after knocking you out," Gaara answered. "They were afraid of me, just like everyone else except for Daniel, Cam and Jack."

"Speaking of Jack, where are he and the others?" Temari asked. She glanced around the infirmary, but it seemed to be empty beyond the siblings and their teacher.

"They were taken to another room. While your presence negated the possibility of genjutsu, it did not absolve the possibility that this might be a kidnapping plot or a plot against you," Baki answered.

"They weren't forcing us to do anything," Temari objected.

"Speak for yourself," Kankuro replied.

"You could have left at any time, Kankuro," Temari pointed out. "You didn't have to follow us out of the house and you didn't have to follow us into the clinic. They wouldn't have done anything to you."

"I still don't see why you think that guy is so great," Kankuro said.

"Who are they?" Baki interrupted.

"Gaara and I met them a couple of days ago at the market place. Gaara played with the younger ones while I helped their older brother shop," Temari answered. "They're from out of town and have only just moved here."

"Did they explain why they broke into the clinic?" Baki asked. "Are they trying to get you to take drugs?"

"We're a little young for that, teacher," Temari replied as Kankuro started giggling.

"Daniel's sick, he needs medicine," Gaara piped up. He stared at Baki. "Is Daniel scared of me? Is that what makes him sick?"

"No one gets sick out of fear and needs medicine," was the only thing that Baki could think to say.

"There's something called germs that are making Daniel sick," Temari answered. "Remember, the redhead said that Daniel had a virus."

"The redhead?" Baki repeated. "You don't even know their names and you followed them?"

"I hadn't met the girl before," Temari replied with a glare, "I told you that I had met Jack before this."

"Why are these children so important to you?" Baki asked.

"They played with Gaara," Temari answered. "No one plays with Gaara, but they did. They're not scared of Gaara at all and I don't even think that they know that we're the Kazekage's children."

The door opened before Baki could reply to Temari's answer and a team of ANBU entered the room. Baki stood up from his chair beside Gaara's bed and Temari sat up straighter in her bed. Even Kankuro moved so that he could see what was going on.

"We've talked to the oldest boy," one of the men in the lead said. "For the most part, I believe in his story, but I thought I should check in with the Kazekage's children to make sure that their story of a sick brother wasn't the lead in to an ambush."

"He's our friend and he's telling the truth, as far as we know," Temari answered before Baki could say anything.

"Right, then, we'll go pick the boy and the others up," the man said. "Sekka, will you come with us? We want a medic nin to look over the sick boy to be sure that he's stable to travel the distance."

"Give me a second to get my gear," Sekka said as he moved towards his office.

"I want to come," Temari said before she could stop herself.

"What?" Baki asked, swinging around to stare at her.

"I want to go with you guys to pick up Daniel," Temari repeated.

"Me too," Gaara said.

"We're not taking any more kids," the man said.

"I know how to use my chakra to run faster, which is something that Jack doesn't know how to do," Temari pointed out.

"We're going to deal with that issue," the man replied, "but I still am not going to take the Kazekage's children with me."

"Gaara will stay here and help things be set up for Daniel's arrival," Temari bargained. "Kankuro can help, too."

"You won't let this go, will you?" the leader asked.

"No," Temari answered. She stuck her chin up in the air. "They're my friends and I want to help."

"With your permission, Baki?" the leader said as he turned toward their teacher.

"Isago, take care of her," Baki ordered.

"Yes, sir," one of the men behind the leader said as he snapped off a salute.

"I'll go get the kid and meet you topside," the leader said before leaving the room.

"I wanted to come," Gaara said with a frown.

"You can't come, Gaara," Temari said. She blinked, experiencing a brief moment of fear, but she quickly brushed that feeling away. Gaara was different around Jack and the others; maybe their theory was right after all. Or, Gaara was just playing with them before killing them, but Temari would go with the first idea for now. "Kankuro can help you pick out some good games to play when someone's sick and maybe you can visit Cam and the others."

"Do you have to include me on this?" Kankuro hissed at Temari.

"Yes," Temari hissed back. "He's our brother, Kankuro, so be nice."

"Fine, fine," Kankuro sighed. "But I'll haunt you if he ends up killing me because he didn't like my description of Go Fish."

"It'll be fine, Kankuro," Temari replied. The medic nin came out of his office with a clatter and Temari got up from the bed. "Be good, Gaara," she said before following after the two men. She was going to see where her new friend lived.


	11. The Yellow Brick Road

A/N: Jack once more. Thanks for reading and reviewing!

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Chapter Eleven: The Yellow Brick Road

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Toshiro led Jack out of the building and into the streets of the village, where they met up with a couple more men and, to his surprise, Temari. "What are you doing here?" he asked as he fell in beside her.

"I wanted to come with you," Temari answered. She shrugged. "You're new to Suna and I bet you didn't expect all of this, even if you broke into the clinic."

"Yeah, right," Jack said. On the one hand, it was nice to see a friendly local, but on the other hand, there was no real way that he could ditch the military team now. Temari was a good lead into the village, but he couldn't work with her if he obviously blew her and her authority figures off for what seemed like no reason. Temari knew where he and the others were staying, so she would notice if they missed their mark and it wasn't as if the military team was as bad as SG1's usual enemies. The Goa'uld never offered to heal his teammates in good faith – though Ba'al would probably be happy to heal his teammates in order to kill them slowly once more.

Of course, it wasn't as though he was going to shake the military team, anyway, so there really wasn't much of a use in thinking about it. But, he had to admit that he was still tempted to try and ditch the team before reaching the cavern that SG1 was staying at. If it wasn't for the fact that Daniel still needed medicine to help him get better, Jack would be glad to slip away before they reached the cavern, gather up the rest of the team, and then head back to break Teal'c, Cam and Janet out of the military building.

Toshiro led the team out of the village, coming to a halt once they reached the desert sands. He turned back to look at Jack. "Okay, which direction are you from? Where do we need to go?"

Jack sighed before motioning towards the cliffs. "We're staying in a cavern over there."

"The old temple? I know where that is," Toshiro answered before blinking at Jack. "Why are you staying there for?"

"It's cheap?" Jack offered with a shrug.

"Okay, then," Toshiro said. He motioned for everyone to stay as he walked several feet away. He did a few hand seals before slamming his hand down onto the ground and calling out: "Kuchiyose no Jutsu!"

Impossibly, smoke billowed out from his hand and when it had dissipated, Jack could see a giant bird standing in front of Toshiro. Jack blinked, but the bird was still there. He had seen a lot of strange things over the years, but he had not seen a bird as big as the bird in front of them. It was about as big as a car, if not bigger, and it had come from nowhere.

"What the hell is that?" Jack asked, absently noticing that no one else seemed to be surprised at the giant animal.

"This is Torio, one of my red tailed hawk summons," Toshiro answered.

"One of those ninja things, right?" Jack asked, trying to remember all of the odd things that Daniel had babbled about when it came to the ninjas in this world.

"Right," Toshiro said, giving Jack another strange look. "Torio's going to be giving you and Temari a ride back to your place."

"What?" Jack blurted out, staring the giant red tailed hawk.

"I'm giving you a ride, kid," the giant red tailed hawk said, throwing Jack for another loop.

"Am I sick, too?" Jack asked, putting a hand to his forehead. "Because I could have sworn that bird talked."

"He did talk, some summons can do that," Temari answered, giving Jack a sympathetic smile.

"I've seen some odd things, but a talking giant bird?" Jack shook his head. "And you want me to ride it?"

"We'll get to your brother quicker that way," Toshiro answered.

"And what about you guys?" Jack asked, motioning to the two others that had joined them. "Are you going to get your own birds, too?"

"We don't need to be flown there; we can move pretty fast when needed," Toshiro reassured. He walked over to Jack and started ushering him and Temari over to the giant red tailed hawk. He then helped Temari aboard the saddle the giant red tailed hawk was wearing and turned to Jack. "You ready to go?"

"Sure, why not. This will be a new experience," Jack muttered to himself as he got aboard the giant red tailed hawk.

"Head over to the cliffs and land right before them; we'll catch up to you in no time," Toshiro instructed the giant red tailed hawk summon.

Torio bobbed his head in acknowledgement. "I'll watch over your charges until then."

Without another word, the three men took off running towards the cliffs. Jack and Temari held on to the saddle as the giant red tailed hawk started running. With one bound and a swoop of its wings, the giant red tailed hawk took flight, circling up to the sky.

It was hard to see anything on the ground, as they were positioned at the middle of the body, with the wings stretching out before them, but Jack could spot parts of the ground. To his amazement, the three men had already made a great distance from the village. Jack estimated that they were about a third of the way to the cliffs – all of that in less than ten minutes!

The three men moved in such a way that they seemed to be flying more than running, bounding from one dune to another. In the areas that were level, they didn't seem to have any trouble with their feet sinking into the sand, which was part of the reason that Jack's group had taken so long getting to and fro from the cavern to the village. Daniel had said that they did some pretty amazing stuff with the energy that they used.

Jack watched the ninjas for a few minutes before turning his attention back to the cliffs. The hawk had almost reached the cliffs while Jack had been paying attention to the ninjas, but what little time they had gained on the ninjas was lost in their spiral descent. As soon as Torio set down, the men appeared over the last dune and Toshiro was there to help Jack and Temari down off the saddle.

"Thanks, Torio," Toshiro told the giant red tailed hawk. "Would you mind waiting around for a couple of minutes? I have a feeling that we might need your help again."

"I do not mind," Torio answered.

"All right, lead the way, Jack," Toshiro said as he motioned Jack towards the cliffs.

"Right, follow me," Jack said as he headed towards the cliffs.

He didn't try to be silent as they made their way up the pathway; the rest of his team in the cavern would have already heard the giant red tailed hawk's landing. Still, he made sure not to set off any of the traps that he had set up the day before. He noticed that none of the others in the group set off the traps as well, not even Temari, but that was to be expected, he figured. They were supposed to be ninjas, after all.

"Who goes there?" Vala called down when they reached a bend in the cliffs.

"It's me," Jack called up.

"And who are your friends?" Vala asked as she came around the bend, holding onto a staff. "And where are Cam, the big guy, and the doctor?"

"We ran into some trouble during the mission; the others are fine, but we ended up with a few extra people to help," Jack carefully said.

"You got caught, didn't you?" Vala asked, giving Jack a knowing look.

"We got caught," Jack agreed.

"I knew I should have gone along, but it was Daniel," Vala said with a sigh. She eyed the people behind Jack. "Everything all right, then?"

"Well, we're getting Daniel the help that he needs, though Janet thinks that it's just something like the flu," Jack answered. He started moving up the path and Vala fell in beside him. "How's Daniel doing?"

"We've got his fever down and he's been sleeping for almost the whole time you've been gone," Vala said as they approached the entrance to the cavern. "Sam's watching over him right now, giving her a break from her project. The rest of us are pretending to be busy, although I think that Jonas is really absorbed in the writings that he found."

"Sounds about right," Jack said.

George met them at the top of the pathway, near the doorway, and raised his eyebrows at the sight of the three men and one girl behind Jack and Vala. "Jack?"

"Picked up some people on the way; the others are still back at the village." Jack shrugged and offered George a smile. "But they're here to help out with Daniel."

"Sekka is a medic nin and he's here to do what he can with your friend, if you'll let us see him," Toshiro said as he motioned towards one of his team. "I'm Toshiro and this is Isago and Temari."

"The girl from the market place," Vala said as she looked at Temari in a new light.

"Well, right this way, gentlemen," George said, motioning towards the entrance.

The young general led the way into the cavern and over to their sleeping place, where the rest of SG1 was. Sam was sitting next to Daniel, sponging off his head with a cloth and a bowl of water and Jonas was sitting near them, reading a dusty old scroll. They both looked up when the group entered, but relaxed when they saw that Jack and George were not disturbed by the strangers' presence.

"I'm assuming that's Daniel?" Sekka said as he moved forward after spotting Daniel. He paused after kneeling down before Daniel and looked towards Sam and Jonas. "I'm a medic nin, here to look at your friend."

"Jack?" Sam called out, looking up to him for reassurance. He knew that she was also asking what had happened to Janet and the others, but it wasn't like they had time or the privacy for a debriefing.

"They wanted to help and they refused to let Janet handle it by herself," Jack explained.

"I've told you, kids should not be diagnosing other kids; you should let the professionals handle it," Toshiro scolded.

Jack shrugged at the looks that SG1 gave him. They knew as well as he did that the physical adults in the room wouldn't know about Janet's qualifications. "Hey, I did let you come back here to check on Daniel, didn't I?"

"Good job, kid," Toshiro agreed. He glanced around at the room before turning back to Jack and George. "You guys don't have parents, do you?"

"You're one sharp tack," Jack replied, shaking his head. He hadn't expected Toshiro to guess so soon, although it would have been obvious when it was time to head back to the village.

"I figured, the way you talked about them." Toshiro sighed. "I guess you all are going to come back with us. I'll call up more of my red tailed hawk summons when it's time."

"I don't suppose we can't just leave a few of us here?" Jack asked, trying hard not to glance towards the Quantum Mirror. "We've become quite attached to the place, you see."

"I can't let any of you kids stay here on your own, it wouldn't be right," Toshiro refused. "Someone can take you back here later to pack up your stuff, though, because I'm sure that we can find you a place in the village."

"You can even join the academy," Temari said.

"You're interested in the academy?" Toshiro asked. He inspected Jack for a moment before nodding to himself. "I'd be willing to sponsor you guys to get you in."

"We'll see," Jack blurted out before any plans were made for them. "First step is getting Daniel better."

"You almost ready to go, Sekka? How's the kid?" Toshiro asked, focusing on the medic nin.

"From what I can tell, it does seem like a simple virus, but it has hit the kid hard," Sekka answered, looking up at his leader. "He should be all right to travel, although I would like to be with him if we send him by bird."

"Torio can handle one adult and one kid," Toshiro confirmed. "And I'll summon Taichi and Hiroto for the rest of the kids to get them back."

"If you give the kids a moment to gather any supplies that they might want to take, I'll be ready to transport Daniel," Sekka said.

Jack snagged Vala's arm and walked with her to where they were keeping their stuff so that he could talk to her without Toshiro or the others over hearing. "Help me gather up Carter and Jonas' stuff so that they can deal with getting the Mirror's stuff out of the way."

"Right," Vala nodded and moved away to gather up Sam's stuff. Jack veered away to head back to where Jonas and Sam were.

"You two deal with getting the Mirror squared away, we'll get your stuff," Jack hissed to them, making sure that they weren't overheard.

"Right," Sam said, her mind instantly on the Mirror.

"Don't forget about Teal'c, Janet and Cam's stuff, too," Jonas reminded before he hurried after Sam.

"We just need to get a few things together and pick up after ourselves a bit," Jack called over to Toshiro, hoping to distract him and Isago from what Sam and Jonas were doing. SG1 really didn't have too much to call their own, although Cam and Teal'c had bought some actual clothing for them during their one market trip. Most of the things that Jack grabbed were the odds and ends that they had found in the room and had gotten attached to. Things like some of the scrolls that Daniel had been so absorbed in and a few of the ancient gizmos that Sam had been fiddling with when she wasn't fiddling with the Mirror. He also grabbed the weapons that he had bought at the market place when Temari had dragged him off, figuring that the ninjas couldn't protest that much about their presence; although, that was if they ever found out that Jack currently had them.

When Jack had finished gathering up the important stuff, he wrapped it up in a bed sheet and handed it to Toshiro to hold before heading over to where the Mirror was. Jonas had already emerged from the screened off area, but Sam was still gathering up loose pieces of the Mirror.

"So, how's it coming?" Jack asked, meaning more than just how she was doing in cleaning up for the time being.

"It would be easier if I had my computers, but near as I can tell, it's a communication error between the control device and the Mirror," Sam answered as she slotted the back of the Mirror closed. "I mean, it's obvious that the Mirror works, but our control device will not work on it."

"Is there a chance in it activating while we're gone?" Jack asked, nodding towards the Mirror.

"A slim chance; it's not like I've taken out any of the necessary crystals for the Mirror, but who knows." Sam shrugged, unwilling to voice what they were both thinking. The Mirror hadn't activated the whole time that they were there and they didn't even know if their originals knew about them just yet.

"Better leave a note, then," Jack said. He took up a bit of paper that they had gotten during the shopping trip and scribbled something before weighting it down with a stone right in front of the Mirror.

"Gone fishing?" Sam asked with a snort when she read it.

Jack shrugged. "Let's them know that we're okay, but not in the immediate vicinity."

"Let's go, then," Sam said, grabbing the control device before leading the way back to the main part of the room.

Toshiro gave them a questioning look, but didn't say anything as he handed Jack back the bundle of things. They headed back down the pathway to where the giant red tailed hawk was waiting; Sekka carrying Daniel with Vala keeping a careful eye on him. Sam, George, Jonas and Vala were all surprised at the giant red tailed hawk, but they managed not to freak out too visibly. Sam started muttering under her breath the moment Toshiro preformed his jutsu once more. This time two giant red tailed hawks appeared out of the smoke and then there were three.

Toshiro and Isago helped Sekka get settled with Daniel on Torio before the giant red tailed hawk took off. The two men then got Temari and the rest of SG1 onto the backs of the other two giant red tailed hawks. Jack and Jonas were put onto Hitoro's back and Temari, Sam, and Vala were on Taichi's back. And then they were off, with the adults racing back to the village.


	12. The Decision

A/N: This is the last chapter of Of the Sand, but I have a sequel and the first chapter to that has been posted. Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed!

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Chapter Twelve: The Decision

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A few days later, Temari took a seat next to Jack at the cafeteria table. The group was currently split between the infirmary and the cafeteria, as most of the other rooms were deemed to be too dull to stay in. Daniel was still stuck in the infirmary, though he was getting better, but that was why Gaara and the black haired girl were there instead of the cafeteria. Cam, Teal'c, and the younger brunet boy were sitting with Kankuro, talking about something or another. Temari was glad to see her surly younger brother getting along with someone at last. She refused to think about how strange it was that her other younger brother was being friendly with someone other than his teddy bear.

The redheaded boy was sitting at another table with the blonde girl, who had bits and pieces of something strewn across the table. Temari had no idea what was going on there and she wasn't sure that she wanted to know what exactly they were doing with the mechanical thing. She just knew that whatever was going on, the whole group was interested in it, although they left it alone to the blonde girl.

And then there was Jack, seated at a separate table from the others, yet still in a position to keep watch over everyone in the cafeteria. He split his time between watching over Daniel in the infirmary and watching over the others in the cafeteria. Although, to be fair, the rest of them split their attentions between the two rooms, too. In fact, Daniel was the only one who hadn't been in both rooms and that was because he was the one who was sick.

Even Temari had just come from the infirmary, although she was more checking up on Gaara, who spent most of his time watching and talking with Daniel. Sitting down next to Jack was the logical choice, as it was a relief to see Kankuro talking to other people willingly and she didn't want to disrupt that. She had thought about sitting down at the blonde's table, but she seemed to be too focused on the device in front of her. Temari knew that the girl would be too distracted to talk to her at the moment. But, Temari also wanted to talk to Jack, though she was quiet for the first few minutes.

"So, your brother is getting better," she finally said.

"Yeah, he'll be trying to escape from the infirmary soon enough," Jack replied, giving her a smile as he finally noticed her.

"And I hear that Toshiro found a place for you guys to live?" Temari continued.

"The apartment next to his," Jack confirmed. "It's a bit small, but at least the girls and guys can have separate rooms."

"It doesn't sound that bad when you put it like that," Temari reflected, thinking about her own house. She and her siblings had more than enough room in their building and, given how antisocial both of her brothers were, she was kind of glad of that. Still, Jack and his siblings seemed to be much closer than Temari and her brothers were. Hopefully there wouldn't be any bloodshed.

"Part of me still wishes that we were allowed to stay at the cavern in the cliffs," Jack mused, staring off in the distance.

"Why?" Temari asked. The cavern had looked like a complete wreck to her and she really couldn't see why anyone would want to stay there when they didn't need to.

"Oh, just not used to staying in the village yet, I expect," Jack replied. "But Toshiro says that we can go back when Daniel's better to pick up some more things. He says that Daniel can have a lot of the old temple rocks, since no one really cares about them anymore."

"That's good." Temari paused and looked at Jack out of the corner of her eye. "So, you're staying, then?"

"Huh?" Jack looked at her and then darted a glance around the room. "I guess we are, for now."

"You have a place to stay in the village, friends, and others who are interested in you," Temari pointed out, "it seems like a good thing to me."

"It is a good thing," Jack agreed, grinning at her.

"So, have you given any thought on the Academy?" Temari asked, almost rushing the words in her eagerness for an answer. "Because school starts in a couple of weeks, and it will take Toshiro and Baki about that long to get you and some of the others registered."

"Is this the ninja academy?" Jack asked.

"Yes," Temari answered. "I'm already signed up to attend this year. I tried to get Baki to keep tutoring me one on one, but both he and my father insist that I attend the academy. I suppose it's only fair for me to come by the ranks normally, but it's going to suck not knowing anyone in class."

"I still don't know," Jack said, looking hesitant as well. Temari really didn't know what he had against the Shinobi Academy, but hoped that he would consent to becoming a student there.

"I got it," the blonde exclaimed. She had put the device back into one piece once more, although there were still stray bits from other devices strewn across the table.

Jack got up without saying a word to Temari and hurried over to the table. The other siblings got up from their own table and also joined them, until even Temari and Kankuro were standing over the device.

"Near as I can tell, a few of the crystals had been switched around, but I think it will work now," the blonde explained as she held the device up. "I mean, I'll have to be near the Mirror to test it out, but we can find out when Toshiro takes us back."

"And then what?" Jack asked, looking from face to face and seeming to have forgotten Temari and her brother's presence. "Then what do we do if it works?"

"I don't know, sir," the blonde replied.

"Toshiro will still be there," Teal'c pointed out.

"I think the safest thing to do at the moment is to wait for them to make contact first," the redhead decided, his voice holding some weight to it. "We'll test it to make sure that it works, but we can't leave just yet."

"Right," Jack agreed.

"What are you talking about?" Kankuro asked, annoyed at not knowing what was going on.

"Just talking about whether we should stay here or go back the way we came from," Cam finally said.

"You're leaving?" Kankuro asked.

"Not yet," Cam said. He put an arm across Kankuro's shoulders and led him back to their table. "We'll stay here for a while yet."

"Are you going to attend the Academy?" Temari asked again.

"What do you say, George? Teal'c? Do you want to become ninjas?" Jack gave the two boys a wide grin.

"I am most interested in learning how to become a ninja, O'Neill," Teal'c replied.

"Chance of a lifetime," George agreed.

"Then let's go tell Daniel that we're going to be ninjas," Jack said. He paused before he could turn towards the door. "We're not stuck and we have our own lives, so why not become ninjas?"

"Ninjas of the Sand," Jonas added.

"Ninjas of the Sand, I like that." Jack chuckled before wandering out of the cafeteria.

Fin.


End file.
